In the Fires of Hell
by BlackIceWitch
Summary: Apocalypse Series Book 2. AU 2012. Sequel to In the Shadow of Dark Wings. The Winchesters don't get a break when the new ruler in Hell frees an ancient force. Whispers of a way to shut demonkind out forever keep the expanding force of hunters looking for the answers as they try to protect the scant population that survived the Apocalypse. No slash. Comments appreciated.
1. Chapter 1 A Promise of Tomorrows

**In the Fires of Hell**

* * *

_"Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough. You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it." _  
_ ― J M Barrie, Peter Pan**  
**_

* * *

**Chapter 1 A Promise of Tomorrows**

_**Heaven, 44,300 BC**_

The long hall, paved in marble and lit with the diffuse golden light of ten thousand candles, was silent, the ranks of the cherubim and the seraphim still and unmoving. The summons had been clear.

Wait. Be silent.

None would dare shift an itching wing, or allow a single chain to clink in the vast space whose hard surfaces picked up every whisper of sound.

"Our Father has commanded that we look upon his creation," Michael said clearly into the silence, the warm, deep baritone of his voice echoing from marble floors and walls, bouncing from the fluted columns of crystal and jade and opal. "This is Man. And he will rule in our Father's image and filled with His Love for all of eternity."

Necks strained as the ranks of the angels peered toward the raised dais at the end of the great hall, wings rustling with a sibilant hiss as they looked upon the creature that stood beside the greatest of archangels.

"In love and obedience, we do prostrate ourselves before him," Michael continued gravely. "It will be our most joyous responsibility to guard and protect and serve him from this time forth."

"Bow? To … this? I will _not_ bow down to him," one voice spoke out, a pure tenor rebounding back and forth between the walls, thick with distaste. "I shall not bow to a lesser being. He will bow to me."

At once, low murmuring filled the hall, voices hushed with shock and astonishment, here and there a faint thread of assent, of admiration, of accord.

Michael turned to his brother, his heart sinking at the words. "Lucifer … will not? Shall not?"

The archangel's face, an unearthly vision of perfect beauty, of niveous skin and heavenly blue eyes, darkened as he looked at his younger brother. "Wilful brother, you were born and bound to obedience. You _will_ kneel before our Father's creation."

"Never," the Lightbringer snarled furiously, walking toward the dais. "We are made and cast away, Michael. I will not be thrown aside for some puling, stinking, hair-covered weakling!"

There were some who argued that of all the angels of the Eighth Choir, Lucifer was the most beautiful, the most perfect in form of any. It was the specious argument of those who had too little to think of, Castiel thought, looking at the rage that twisted the archangel's features now. Long hair, red as the embers of a long-burning fire, flowed over broad, pale shoulders, framed an oval face, a strong jawline and high, wide cheekbones. His eyes were striking, an incandescent blue that rarely appeared in nature, outlined by long lashes a darker red than his hair. The full, curving lips were distorted, their plump carmine perfection thinned out as they drew back in wrath.

Castiel shrank back against the wall as he noticed the light in the hall beginning brighten, almost imperceptibly at first, then strengthening as it quickened. He dropped to the floor, knees smarting as they hit the unforgiving marble, the great sigh of wings surrounding him as his brothers did the same, filling the air with the scents of flowers and feathers.

In the centre of the hall, Lucifer stood, defiantly upright, his wings, of pearl and ivory and alabaster, half-raised as his eyes narrowed against the nascent brightness. To his left and right, angels stood with him, four on one side, five on the other, upright in solidarity with the rebellious archangel, but their heads bowed as the light, which was not, precisely, light, pierced the wavelengths of their forms, outlining metaphysical constructs of bone and tendon, feather and vein and muscle.

"You are cast down to the earthly plane, Morning Star, bringer of Light."

It was not words they heard, nor a voice, nor a sound at all. It was not images they could see nor even a frequency of the natural energy of the universe. It was beyond definition, beyond understanding, and yet it was clear. The ten angels barely had time to take another breath before the constructs they wore like robes of air solidified and they were thrust through the veils that divided the two planes.

* * *

_**Mesopotamia. One thousand years later.**_

"I will make them a war they will not forgot, not in a thousand years, not in ten or a hundred thousand," Lucifer said fiercely to his lieutenant as he belted his sword about his waist and stared out over the endless, shifting sands. His followers stood waiting, the hiss of metal and the ring of metal on metal muffled in the open space, fragmented by the ceaseless wind. "One third of the angels in Heaven have already rallied to my side. Michael will not forget this day!"

He was right about that.

Michael, archangel and commander of the Host, never forgot the day he fought over the wide, golden sands of the desert, under a killing sun and a frigid moon. He never forgot how the earth trembled and shuddered beneath their feet as angel battled angel and warriors fell on both sides, blood spilling into the thirsty sand and the land drinking deeply. Or the thousands of days of war that followed it, legions dead, the desert red under the pitiless flat glare, the sand black under the chill white light of the stars.

He never forgot his brother's screams as he hacked the wings from his shoulders and called the commandment, the ground yawing open at his feet, a widening maw of fire and foul stench and a pulsing red light that echoed the beat of a heart and throbbed insistently as the rebels were pushed closer and closer to the edge of the depthless abyss. It was a thing of this plane, and another plane entirely, the accursed plane, joined along the edges, deep within the mantle of the earth, a prison of soul and spirit and flesh, a cage of fire and heat and torment.

He never forgot the nine who'd followed Lucifer on his insane quest to be greater than their Father, could not rid himself of the memories of their pleading and begging to be spared, to keep their wings, to return … they Fell, one by one into the abyss, and their voices remained, rising higher with their desperation until the shrilly oscillating sound had killed every living thing in a hundred mile radius.

He never forgot the way the earth had closed at his command and those screams were silenced.

* * *

_**Kansas City, Kansas. August 2012.**_

Dean looked along the empty street carefully, searching out the shadows, the edges, looking for movement, for a reflection or shape or colour that didn't belong. He nodded and started moving again when he was sure that none of those were present in the deserted concrete and brick buildings to either side, peripherally aware of the others to his right, attenuated senses taking note of the flick of their shadows, the soft slur and muted crunch of their footfalls over the rubble that covered the pavements.

Kansas City was not looking good, he thought absently as he turned the corner and searched the next section of street. None of the cities had fared all that well, the skyscrapers burned out and left riddled by the moaning of the wind through their scoured and emptied interiors, the streets still filled with the rapidly rusting and desiccated hulks of vehicles, with glass and metal and the heaped mazes of fallen masonry and the detritus of a world long dead.

There were still places that held things of use, even when the entire area looked and smelled like a mausoleum. The plagues and depredations of those who'd come after, hunting through the remains for food or shelter, had left a surprising number of stores and goods untouched. And if they'd been kept deep enough, stored far enough from the reach of the weather, they were often still intact.

He'd been surprised by the number and variety of electric and electronic equipment they'd been able to salvage, but perhaps he shouldn't've been. Wrapped within their non-degradable coverings, packed into weather-proof crates, stored in the back rooms and basements of the bigger stores in the cities, almost all had worked once the magic lifeblood of alternating current had been fed to them.

Chuck had his optical drives, the writer – _prophet_, Dean corrected himself with a faint half-grin – had hidden himself in an office and gotten down to the nuts and bolts of transferring the library's contents into a digital form that could be searched. Mitch Hennessy was the seventeen-year old survivor Chuck had recruited to do the programming work. The kid was tall and gangly, had hung onto his prescription glasses somehow through the years of dodging croats and demons and being enslaved to work on body removal in Las Vegas, and couldn't hold a conversation about anything other than disk capacity and binary and the algorithms needed for super-fast search capabilities but the two of them seemed happy enough to hide from the rest of the world and get on with it. Periodically Mitch or Chuck would emerge, clutching a list of other items required for the task. For this trip, he had to find a digital scanner and a selection of OCR software. Whatever that was.

Security cameras, pressure-sensitive alarms, motion-detectors, floodlamps, closed circuit security systems, intercoms, line-of-sight radio equipment, hard drives, portable drives, music systems … all of them had been found, retrieved, installed in the new holds that had risen up in and around the small town and were making life that little bit easier, for the most part.

A soft whistle pulled his thoughts back to the street, and he saw Maurice looking ahead, their target in sight. Nodding, he moved out to take point again, watching the shadows and the piles of crap that filled the street, looking for anomalies and differences.

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

Merrin looked around the store-room, her normally smooth forehead creased in dissatisfaction. The dispensary, such as it was, barely held enough supplies to cover a GP's surgery, let alone the hospital-sized quantities she was used to. The warehouse in Grand Rapids had been destroyed – it'd been one of the first things that the hunters had checked on after the attack on the camps – but there had to be others, better protected, filled with the products they needed here.

They had the basics, she thought, but not enough of them. And the things that were impossible to manufacture now were in very low supply. Turning abruptly, she left the room and walked down the long, cold hall toward the warren of offices that Liev had placed between the kitchens and the store-rooms.

Alex looked up as the older woman strode in without knocking, her finger automatically moving to rest on the column in the ledger in front of her, the young man and woman leaning over the desk to either side of her looking up as well.

Seeing that she wasn't alone, Merrin grimaced. "Sorry, Alex, but something has to be done."

Alex lifted a brow slightly and looked at her. "About what?"

"About our medical supplies," Merrin said, walking across the room and sitting down stiffly in the chair facing her. "Our _lack_ of medical supplies," she clarified tersely.

"We can go if –" the young woman started to say, glancing awkwardly at the desk, the short, curving bob of her hair falling forward over her cheek.

"No. Merrin, this is Maria, that's Freddie, they're going to be helping out with the admin side of the keep," Alex said firmly. "Merrin is the person responsible for our medical supplies, not only here but in cooperation with the Michigan camps." She gestured vaguely. "Sit down, you both need to hear this, this is exactly the kind of thing you'll be dealing with."

Maria backed away from the desk and sat in the straight-backed chair to one side. Freddie moved to the armchair beside the filing cabinets. Merrin watched them impatiently. She recalled now Alex telling her about them. Both were in their early twenties and both had said they'd had experience with administration duties, Maria in bookkeeping during her school vacation time, Freddie as a paralegal, trying to cover his pre-law costs.

"What do we need?" Alex asked, noting the nurse's frustrated expression.

"Everything!" Merrin burst out. "Antibiotics, painkillers, anti-inflammatories – hell, a whole range of pharmaceuticals that we lost in the attack … sutures, needles, syringes, bags, dressings, vaccinations, gauze, swabs, bandages … the monitors we had at Chitaqua were destroyed, the lab and everything in it … Kim and Ray can't do cultures, can't even check simple blood tests without a microscope –"

Alex nodded understandingly, lifting her hand. "Okay, Freddie, Maria, first job – we don't have phone books, so we need to poll the people we've got here, and the people over in Michigan – anyone who has any information on pharmaceutical and medical supply warehouses or manufacturers. Get Tricia and Sandra and Michelle to help you check with everyone here, and tell Anson we need to talk to Renee over in Tawas. We're looking for locations so it doesn't matter if they know what they held for sure, just any information on where they are – and specifically if anyone knows of any manufacturers or distribution warehouses in Kansas City or Omaha."

The two rose and hurried out of the room, and Merrin heard their voices, bickering with each other as they walked up the hall and out of earshot.

"It was easier when there weren't so many of us, wasn't it?" she said disparagingly. Alex looked at her and smiled.

"Yeah, but we'll get there eventually. The teams bring back information on what's left in the cities whenever they go out." She leaned back in the chair and let out a long breath. "One thing about the land of the free, the medical industry was huge, so we'll find what we need."

The nurse shook her head. "Maybe we will, and for the most part, maybe we'll be able to keep the equipment in good enough repair to work for twenty years, or fifty. But what are we going to do when we run out?"

Alex looked at her thoughtfully. "I don't know. Figure it out, somehow."

"People will die of infection again. In childbirth. From broken limbs we can't x-ray to set properly. They'll die of misdiagnosis –"

"Even a few years ago, they did that," Alex reminded her softly. "We were overusing the antibiotics and we paid for that, we'll probably be paying for that for a while. At least no one's likely to die of too much cholesterol or diabetes these days."

The nurse frowned at her. "You don't think we'll ever get back what we had, do you?"

"I think it's unlikely," Alex admitted reluctantly. "When that locust plague went through … Rufus said that they haven't an intact library since. Nearly all the books are gone, and you know what that means. Learning from trial and error, through experience, that took a long time the first go round."

"But there must be people who know how to do it, to make … everything?"

"There probably are," Alex said, leaning forward across the desk. "But so much was automated, so much was generated in computer-driven factories, from plastics we don't know how to reproduce, to circuitry that was pretty heavily guarded in each industry, I'm not sure how much help that's going to be."

Merrin looked at her sourly. "You're depressing to talk to, you know that?"

Alex laughed ruefully. "Yeah, it's been said."

"Why Kansas City and Omaha, specifically?" Merrin asked curiously.

"That's where the teams are right now," Alex told her. "Dean's in Kansas City, and Vince is in Omaha. If there are any pharmaceutical warehouses there, and the information comes back quickly enough, Bobby can patch that through to them. They have a regular sked on the SSB radios, keep each other up to date."

* * *

_**Kansas City, Kansas**_

Dean and Maurice stood on either side of the trucks, shotguns held loosely ready, eyes scanning the street as Billy, Lee, Danielle and Joseph loaded one and Adam, Zoe, Perry and Isaac loaded the other. Even finding the vehicles had been difficult. The metal frames and engines had all been intact, but the rubber tyres, the hoses, gaskets, seals, interiors and electrics had been consumed, and finding replacements had needed another few days of searching through the city for suppliers who'd kept their stock shrink-wrapped in inedible plastics.

Dean glanced across at the progress being made, one eye flicking in a fast wink to the other hunter. The trainees had done well enough, no stupid or careless mistakes made. Rufus had been thorough in most of the things they'd needed drilled into them, despite his endless complaints about their levels of ignorance. Getting the older hunter's cooperation was costing him, though. He'd have to try to find a liquor warehouse if they had time this run, he'd gone through his own stash and started borrowing from Ellen's to satisfy the remuneration demanded.

"All done," Billy said, wiping his hands on his jeans and looking over the hood at the hunter.

"Yeah, us too," Zoe added, gesturing as Perry tightened the rope over the load. "Where do we go next?"

Maurice snorted softly and Dean grinned. "Alright, Billy, take your truck, Lee, Joseph, you're riding on the back. Danielle's shotgun. Zoe, you get the second truck, with Adam and Isaac on the back and Perry navigating. Maurice and I'll take point and rear, and you watch us, alright? No vagueing out or talking about your sex lives."

The wide, answering grins he got reminded him suddenly of himself, climbing into the driver's seat of a pickup, Sam clambering up into the back, his brother's hair flopping over his forehead as he'd shifted his grip on the shotgun he'd held, his father getting into the Impala … he pushed the memory aside, watching the kids go to their positions, the trucks starting up.

From the other side of the street, Maurice's face was creased in a smile. "Déjà vu," he said with a chuckle, "I remember when your old man –"

Dean shook his head. It was too exposed here. "Save the memory lane moments for home," he told the older man tersely. "Let's get going."

* * *

"CQ, CQ. Calling CQ. This is DWM208, Delta-Whiskey-Mike-Two-Zero-Eight, calling CQ and standing by."

The radio crackled slightly and Dean adjusted the tuner, watching as the flicker of the digital readout steadied.

"_Roger, Delta-Whiskey-Mike-Two-Zero-Eight, this is Kilo-Lima-Lima-Hotel-Zero-Niner, receiving you, loud and clear_," Bobby's scratchy voice came from the small speaker and Dean leaned back in the seat, relaxing slightly. "_Gotta a message for you, Dean. From Alex. Need to add pharma and med supplies to your shopping list in KC_."

"Great, love those extended shopping runs," Dean said resignedly, reaching for the pen and paper in the glove box. "What's the address?"

"_Adams Street, Kansas side, follow the train tracks and get off the 35 at West Greystone. There's a bunch of warehouses and freight depots down there_."

"What am I looking for?" He wrote down the location, absently fitting it into what he knew of the city. It would take them a couple of hours to get around the worst parts of the city, but it was doable.

"_Everything, according to Alex. Here's the list –_" Bobby cleared his throat and starting reciting the items and Dean wrote each one down, spelling most of the pharmaceuticals phonetically, noting down the desired quantities for each of them to one side.

"Geez, Bobby, we'll need another truck," he said in exasperation, when the old man stopped.

"_Alex gave this top priority, Dean_," Bobby said. "_We're low on everything and Merrin's just started training up more nurses, so there's a bit of wastage. Get whatever you can and get lots of it_."

"Will do," Dean said, tucking the list into his jacket pocket and looking across the river in front of him. "Gonna put us back a few more days."

"_I'll let her know_."

"How 'bout Vince? How's Omaha looking?"

"_Said they had to clean out a big nest of ghouls, set up shop downtown and must have gotten some survivors because there were fresh bones in the lair_," Bobby told him.

Dean frowned at that. "Where the hell did they get survivors?"

"_Got me_," Bobby said. "_I thought that most folks would've died in the lead up, but apparently not_."

"Hmmm."

"_Yeah_."

"Alright, anything else?" he asked, stifling a yawn. They were camping in the shell of a factory, on the eastern side of the Missouri River. Everything had gone from the interior but the walls and roof were intact and the vehicles and their small tents were ringed around with circles of protection, of salt and iron and fire.

"_Nope, get some shut-eye, I heard that_." He heard the smile in the old man's voice and wrinkled his nose at the speaker. "_Tell Maurice to stay frosty_."

"Yeah, will do. Signing off."

Putting the mike back on the hook, he flicked the radio off and slid out of the car, closing the door quietly behind him as he walked to the cookfire and Maurice's hunched form sitting by it.

"Any news?" The older hunter turned to look at him, his face half-shadowed.

"Got some extras for our list of pickups," Dean said, dropping to the ground and looking at the coffee pot. "Any of that left?"

"It's thick enough to stand a spoon in," Maurice warned him as he lifted it off the fire and poured a half cup. "What kind of extras?"

"Medical supplies."

"Got a location?"

"Half a one," Dean said, his face screwing up as he tasted the thick, bitter coffee, swallowing it down anyway. "Other side of the river, those big warehouses past the train lines."

Maurice nodded. "What about Vince and his team?"

"Omaha's full of ghouls, Bobby said."

"Well, that'll give them some exercise."

"Yeah." Dean's mouth lifted a little. "God, I can't drink this."

Looking down into the cup, he tossed the rest onto the fire, the branches hissing as the liquid hit the hot coals.

Maurice chuckled quietly. "I did warn you. What'd you think of our trainees today?"

Dean put the cup down and shrugged. "They were alright. Didn't seem to be hanging on their nerves too much."

"Yeah," Maurice nodded. "I suspect that being in class with Rufus would be more nerve-wracking than out here with us."

"The town's dead," Dean said, leaning back on his elbows and straightening out his legs. "Just as well for us," he added, frowning as a detail from the conversation with Bobby returned to him and turning to look at Maurice.

"Apparently the ghouls in Omaha weren't feeding from the boneyards."

Maurice finished the thick coffee in his cup and put it down before he responded. "Fresh kills?"

"That's what Vince told Bobby."

"How? We've been looking for survivors for at least eight weeks, haven't seen anyone."

"Sixty-four dollar question," Dean agreed tiredly. "Which one of those kids supposed to be watching with you?"

"Joseph," Maurice answered absently, glancing at the tent. "I'll get him in a minute."

"Get him now," Dean said, lying down and pulling the edge of the sleeping bag around his shoulder. "I'm done."

* * *

_**Hell, August 2012**_

The demon looked around as he entered the fifth level, uneasy in the silence and emptiness. He'd been here before, but passing through, hurrying through the endless corridors and halls and great rooms, not lingering.

Centuries ago, one of the demons of the abyss had told him that this level had been built to mirror the halls of Heaven. The floors were polished black basalt, smoothed and bevelled to resemble tiles, and tall, graceful columns, fluted or delicately engraved, supported the unseen arches of the ceilings, lost in the shadows above.

It was unsettling, the demon thought, an entire level, empty yet menacingly elegant. He hurried through, hearing only the whisper and low moaning of the winds from the deeper levels as they followed the corridors and skirled around the chambers and cavernous rooms. Unsettling and eerie.

The level had been Astaroth's, and the archdemon had been renowned for his delight in long-lasting and vicious torturing of souls. The juxtaposition of that reputation and the overweening refinement of the spaces he walked through now was difficult to reconcile. He'd known some, in life, like that, he thought. Think nothing of sliding the shiv in as they declared love and pressed their cold lips against yours.

He stopped as he came to a wide entrance doorway, looking around in wide-eyed astonishment.

"Bloody hell," he breathed. The – what _was_ it? Audience room? Throne chamber? – room was more than a thousand feet long, and at least a third of that in width, the long sides emphasised by towering pillars of onyx and jet and obsidian, hollowed and filigreed into fantastically delicate cages of air. At the end of the room, a low dais took up almost the entire width. On the dais, in the centre, stood a seat. A throne, he corrected himself slowly, walking down the length of the room toward it. Gold, chased with silver and jet, the high back carved into wings that stretched up and out, every feather detailed and inlaid with precious stones. In the persistent and unchanging light of this plane, the metals and gems were shaded and coloured in different hues of red, as if the throne had been washed in blood.

Probably has been, he thought, slowing as he neared it. On the other hand, what part of the accursed plane and its prisoners and guards had not?

He climbed the broad, shallow steps and stopped in front of the throne, staring down at it. Fit for a king.

Not a king, he realised slowly. For _the_ King.

Turning around before he could question himself further on the wisdom of what he wanted to do, he sat on the wide seat, his arms resting along the carved and inlaid arms of the throne, fingers curling over the ends.

There was a throb. Through the air. Through the rock. Through his soul.

_Power_.

Deep through the caverns and caves, through the tunnels and reaching down to the bottom of the abyss and further, across the lake and into the wastelands. He felt it first as a charge, slipping through what his mind remembered of his body, tingling in his fingertips, stuttering in his chest. Then it grew. And it filled him.

_POWER_. And he understood.

The power of the souls held in here, filled with energy, even after they'd been blackened and twisted and charred beyond recognition. The energy of the millions, or billions, that had passed through, sinking into rock and filling the very air he breathed with their anguish and desolation. It grew and crackled through the throne he sat on, through his own torrefied soul, seeping into every crevice, every fissure and crack, sealing them over, opening his mind and branding new pathways away from the old ones. He couldn't breathe. Couldn't move, welded to the throne and its connection with the power that rose through the levels. He felt every moment of pain. Every second of anguish and torment and despair. Every soul. Every single soul.

He sat there for four days as the unchecked power of the souls of Hell poured through and into him and everything he'd ever thought was reshaped and reborn, and all that he'd believed fell away, incinerated in the conflagration of new knowledge.

Born Fergus Roderick McLeod, in the tiny town of Canisbay in northern Scotland, his life had been short on adventure and long on boredom. The smell of the sea and the shore at low tide, the cold damp of the winter storms, burning peat, boiled cabbage and the warm stink of the inn were what filled the little memories he still had of the place. And then the demon had come along. And ten short years later, no richer, no happier, he'd heard the howls in the night.

It'd taken a scant hundred years to burn the humanity out of him. And less to come to love the job he'd been given. Making deals. Tempting and persuading and cajoling the weak into ten years of heaven on earth, and an eternity down amidst the flames. He was good at it. He didn't lie. Much. Not much at all. Was hardly ever needed, in fact. And he didn't welch on the deals he made. Everyone was fully satisfied. And his numbers had gone up and his standing and he'd begun to entertain thoughts about going further.

And now … now he was here. King of Hell. The rightful ruler of the accursed plane. He got up from the throne and felt the power sing through him, in all that remained of his soul. There were things he had to attend to. Important things. Things that would change the world.

* * *

_**Kansas City, Kansas**_

Moving away from the side of the truck, Dean watched the fences behind the massive prefabricated building, where the train tracks ran down alongside the river. He'd been happily surprised when Joseph had taken his list and rewritten it, replacing his phonetically spelled items with the correct labels.

"Worked in a hospital as an orderly for three years before I got my paramedic training," the young man told him with a shrug. "Just gotta a good memory for stuff that's written down."

Dean'd filed that information away carefully. There was a word for that kind of memory, but he didn't think he'd ever known what it was. He could ask Alex when he got back. In the meantime, Joseph had copied out the list and given the copies to Isaac and Zoe and the three of them had been loading boxes and crates onto the hand carts all morning, checking off the items one by one.

It'd taken two days to find another truck, find the replacement tyres and wire for the electrical circuits and something to bind over the steel frames where the seats had been. The Dodge flatbed would handle the full load and as an added bonus there'd been a wholesale liquor warehouse right next door to the tyre place that had survived with most of its premium stock intact. Forty cases of whiskey and bourbon sat tucked on the back, padded and tied down securely. It would keep Rufus happy for awhile at least.

The lightweight chain-link fences that separated the industrial buildings from the tracks looked to be in one piece. Access was easier from the road, but it seemed like these buildings hadn't been touched, even when the city had been fully infected. He'd spent three days trying to get out when the virus had first been running out of control and he couldn't remember which parts had burned to the ground and which had just been filled with the psychopathically enraged victims. Walking around the short edge of the building, his senses stretched out, Dean wondered what had survived here.

Aside from the light breeze that blew toward him from the river, carrying the fetid stench of drying mudbanks and the acrid odour of hot steel from the railway lines as they slowly heated up in the summer sun, nothing was moving anywhere in his vicinity. He was turning back when the small noise penetrated.

A click. Rock on rock.

Pivoting slowly around, the barrel of the shotgun rising unhurriedly, he scanned the long line of the fence. It took a moment to see it, the animal still as stone on the other side of the chainlink. A dog. A big one.

Some kind of Bernard or Newfie, he thought, but the colouring was wrong for both, this dog was brindle, not the chestnut-and-white patches of the St Bernard breed, nor the blue-black of the Newfoundland. The dog was looking straight at him and he felt the nerves prickle along the back of his neck.

They hadn't seen any dogs in any city or town since Baal had passed over. A few cats, plenty of vermin, but no dogs.

A second dog appeared from below the edge of the bank, moving to stand beside the first, dark eyes protruding slightly from the fine, pointed head, the sunlight gleaming on a short, jet-black coat and lighting the cinnamon points to red. The Doberman's mouth opened and a pink tongue lolled out, saliva dripping from the lower jaw.

He started to back up, moving slowly along the short side of the warehouse, wondering if any of the guns in the trucks were loaded with silver. The dogs watched him, and after a moment, two more appeared, on the other side of the big, heavy-set leader. A Collie and a Weinmarer, possibly.

"Maurice," Dean raised his voice a little as he saw the corner of the building in his peripheral vision.

"Yo," the older hunter answered, watching the teams. "What?"

"We got silver with us?"

"Yeah, couple of cases. Why?"

"Skinwalkers."

Dean backed around the corner and turned, running for the trucks. "Load what you're carrying with silver, now!"

They were decoys, he realised, the four by the back fence, as another ten appeared on the road and raced across the open concrete apron toward them. His fingers pulled out the magazine on the assault rifle, slamming in a pre-loaded magazine from the metal case Maurice thrust at him and flicking the gun's rate from full auto to semi. Swinging up onto the back of the truck, he put the gun's stock against his shoulder and started to shoot.

To his left, he could hear Maurice's Kalashnikov, single shot, firing steadily, and the more random firing of one of the trainees, a brief hope they'd taken the time to load up with silver flickering through his thoughts as dog after dog raced toward him.

He'd dropped six of the ten when the rest broke and veered off behind the building, taking themselves out of sight and range.

"Goddammit!" Lowering the rifle barrel, he swung around and looked at Maurice. "Everyone loaded with silver?"

"Joseph, Zoe and Isaac are still in the building," Maurice said, popping the magazine out and checking the shots left and slamming it back in again. "Adam, Danielle and Lee are loaded. Perry and Billy are reloading the mags for the handguns." He gestured brusquely at the cab of the truck and Dean could see the two young men, heads bowed as they feverishly stripped the magazines and reloaded them.

"You want to chase them?"

"No! Hell, no, not if we don't have to," Dean said angrily, jumping down from the flatbed and hurrying to the loading dock, expelling his auto's mag and replacing it with one loaded with silver as he strode across the distance. "How far are we along with that list, Lee?"

The young man looked over at him. "A few more items, and we're done."

Dean nodded. "Alright, Maurice is calling the shots. You stay on the trucks, got it? You do not go after them, you stay here and guard what we've got. Clear?"

"Yessir," Lee said smartly. Adam nodded.

"We clear, Adam?" Dean said sharply to him.

"Yeah, we're clear," Adam said, his tone a little resentful as his gaze cut away.

"Perry, you and Billy, keep those magazines for the rifles coming. Takes a heart-shot to kill a skinwalker. That means chest shot from the front or behind the shoulder angled forward from the back."

Dean took another four magazines, shoving them into his jacket pocket and vaulted onto the high concrete dock. "Don't let them through, Maurice."

"I won't, go find those kids."

Turning on his heel, Dean disappeared into the shadows of the building, swearing softly under his breath as his eyes adjusted to the dim light and he saw the long aisles of racks, filled with crates and boxes of every size.

"Joseph!" he risked a shout, hearing his voice echo oddly from the high, metal roof and muffled by the porous packing cases on the shelves. "Zoe!"

There was a sound from somewhere, deep within the building's maze of shelving, but he couldn't make it out. He started walking faster.

The gunfire was not muffled. He heard the sharp yap of Zoe's 9mm before it was drowned out by the cannon fire of Joseph's .44, the retorts booming at the end of the building and he was running, the rifle cocked as he tore around the end of the aisle and skidded along the slick concrete floor.

* * *

_**St Elphege Monastery, Tibet**_

Dhargey lay on the stone. He could feel the blood bubbling in his chest, in his throat, and he thought that he would last only a few minutes more, before that bubbling filled everything and became a still lake.

The demons had come in the night. It was unusual. And they had come with a man. More unusual. The man stood to one side of him, dressed in a tailored black suit, the shiny black leather of his shoes visible from the corner of his eye.

"I'm looking for something," the man said. His voice was hard, raspy, the accent educated East London. The lifelong habit of acquiring information, no matter how trivial or of little use was ingrained and the monk couldn't stop himself from doing it as he lay dying.

"A stone," the man continued, dropping into a crouch beside his head. "With writing on it. You know the one?"

The Tibetan rolled his eyes toward the man.

"Yeah, yeah, dying an' all that," the man said impatiently. "Where is it?"

The touch of the man's fingers along his jaw was excruciating, a million knives stabbing into him, twisting and turning as the fingertips caressed his skin. He waited for the pain to take him, his eyes locked onto the man's.

The hand lifted and the pain ceased before the overload could give him the relief of death.

"Tough little beggar, aren't you?"

The man rose to his feet, shrugging as he turned to the demons waiting behind him. "Tear it apart, every level. It's here somewhere an' we're not leaving until we find it."

On the floor, Dhargey felt the pain vanish completely as his lungs filled. He made the final prayer, for himself, for his colleagues. And blackness came, shutting out his vision as his heart slowed and stopped.

The man looked down at the open eyes of the monk, sighing slightly. Fourteen of them had been here when they'd come in. The fighting had been fierce but brief and all were dead now. He looked around the open-sided hall, drawing his coat more closely around him and lifting the short collar. The wind was freshening, cold and biting from the high, permanently snow-covered ranges to the west.

There were a lot of things here that he could use, he thought, walking from the frigid hall to the slightly warmer interior rooms. But he didn't have time to look through them all. Right now, he needed just the one thing.

* * *

_**Kansas City, Kansas**_

Zoe was crouched on the ground, firing at the dogs that snarled and bristled along the building's wall. Under her, Isaac lay on the concrete floor, his shoulder soaked in blood, his gun lying a foot or two from his hand. Joseph stood a few feet from them and a little closer to the rest of the pack, taking shots steadily, upright in the Weaver stance, one hand cupped under the butt of his auto as the barrel swivelled smoothly from side to side.

Dean started shooting as soon as he saw the dogs, the .45 calibre silver bullets finding target after target, chest shots mostly at this angle, the dogs flying back, dead before they hit the floor, canine bodies transforming back into men and women.

"Back!" he yelled at Zoe as he came up past her. "Both of you, get back, they're skinwalkers."

He saw Joseph moving backward from the corner of his eye, heard the scrape of Zoe's boots on the concrete and the soft slur as she dragged Isaac away and focussed his attention on the remaining dogs in front of him.

_Big pack_. The thought snuck in as the last one, a monstrous Anatolian mastiff dropped, the fur and frame melting and dissolving into the figure of a tall, broad-chested man. His gun was hot as he popped the near-empty second magazine out and slammed a fresh one in.

"What –? What the fuck are they?" Joseph said from behind him.

He turned around and saw Zoe bending over Isaac, her gun tucked back in its holster as she lifted the edge of the boy's jacket to look at the torn up flesh and fabric beneath.

"Skinwalkers," Dean told Joseph, looking at his shocked face. "Rufus didn't tell you about them?"

He saw the guilty look flash between Joseph and Zoe and sighed inwardly. The hunter had. Too much info hitting them too fast.

"They're kind of like werewolves," he said quietly, walking to Isaac and crouching beside him, looking expressionlessly at the deep bite in his shoulder. "Need silver to the heart to kill 'em."

In the distance, at the other end of the building, he could hear the rat-tat of the automatic weapons. _Big, big pack_. He gestured to Zoe to get up, and closed his hand around Isaac's uninjured arm, straightening up and pulling the young man to his feet.

"Come on," he said brusquely, gesturing ahead with the barrel of the Colt automatic. "How much more did we need?"

"Not much," Zoe said, glancing around as they turned down the aisle. "We found the broad-spectrum antibiotics down there, we were loading them when the dogs came."

"What about the ones outsi–?" Joseph started to ask when the gunshot rang out, making both of them jump.

Dean let Isaac drop to the floor, his face stony. He looked at the slack, shocked faces of the young woman and man standing in front of him, their mouths open as they stared down at their dead friend.

"Like werewolves, skinwalkers turn with a bite. There's no cure," he said shortly. "Get going, get those boxes loaded. We'll burn the bodies after we've got everything."

"You killed him?" Zoe didn't move, her gaze lifting slowly to Dean.

"He was bitten," Dean repeated, as patiently as he could, striding toward her and pushing her around, down the aisle. "There's no coming back from it. He would've turned, become one of them."

"But –"

"Goddammit, get moving," Dean snapped. "There is no 'but'. This is it, this is the job."

Following them down to the abandoned hand-cart, he watched them finish loading it, his thoughts and feelings locked down and away.

* * *

Maurice looked up as they came onto the loading dock, and nodded to Billy and Adam to start unloading. Danielle, Perry and Lee picked up their rifles and moved to the other trucks, climbing onto the flatbeds next to the loads and watching the open concrete lot.

"Big pack," Maurice commented lightly to Dean, noting that he'd come back with only two of the three trainees.

"Yeah."

"Isaac bitten?"

"Yeah."

Adam looked up at them, a frown drawing his brows together as he belatedly noticed that only Joseph and Zoe were there.

"What happened to Isaac?"

"Get that stuff loaded," Dean said, reloading the auto's mags from the case of silver bullets.

"Where's Isaac?" Adam said again, not moving as he stood on the flat tray of the truck and stared at his half-brother.

"Isaac didn't make it," Joseph told him, pushing a box at him.

For a moment, Dean thought that Adam was going to ignore it, was going to argue. He felt an answering anger rising as he lifted his head to stare back at the younger man, unaware that his eyes had darkened, or that his expression had flattened out to a frigidly threatening scowl. Adam took the box and turned, lips tightly pressed together as he stacked it tightly against the others.

"You want to burn the bodies?" Maurice asked softly.

Dean looked at him, sucking in a deep breath. He nodded. "As soon as the loads are done and cinched down, yeah."

* * *

"Maurice, take the last truck. Adam can ride with you," Dean said tiredly as they threw the last body onto the burning pyre. "Billy, you drive truck two, with Lee and Zoe. Joseph, you take the Mercury, you're rear. Danielle, you're on truck one with Perry."

The trainees got into the vehicles and started them, Maurice glancing at Dean as he walked back to the truck.

"We stopping on the way?"

Dean shook his head, heading for the Impala. "No, straight home."

He got into the black car and started the engine, watching the trucks pull out after him as he turned for the back roads west to lead them out of the city. In the rearview mirror, he could see the thick, black smoke rising lazily into the still air from the pyre. He could feel the grit and ash on his skin, and rough in his throat. Kid had been twenty, if that.

He reached for the stereo, his fingertips light on the case of the tape and stopped, letting his hand drop. He didn't want to listen to anything. Didn't want to think about anything. The trip had been too long already and he wanted to be back in the fortified town. They'd gotten everything they'd needed. And had left a kid behind. A dead kid.

* * *

Maurice glanced sideways at the young man sitting rigidly beside him. "Got something to get off your chest, Adam?"

"He killed Isaac," Adam said tightly, staring through the windshield.

"Isaac got bitten," Maurice said mildly. "There's no cure for a bite from a skinwalker. Not for a werewolf bite either."

"Zoe told me he just gunned him down in cold blood."

"Isaac would've turned into a monster – you think that'd be a preferable option?"

Adam turned his head slowly to look at the older hunter. "And if it'd been me who'd gotten bit? Or you?"

"Same deal, Adam," Maurice said patiently. "No exemptions in this life. Didn't Rufus tell you that?"

Adam looked back out the windshield, his face tight. Isaac had been a friend. Had started to become a friend. He couldn't believe he was dead. Couldn't believe that his older brother – his _half_-brother – had killed him. Without doubt or hesitation, Zoe'd said. Just bam! An execution.

"Son, we passed out of the old world a while back now," Maurice said, glancing across at him. "This world, this is how it's always been for hunters – like me, like your brothers and your dad – monsters and demons and ghosts and all the things that go bite in the dark. It's why your father tried to keep you out of it."

"Didn't do much of a job, did he?"

"He did the best he could," Maurice countered. "I worked with John, a few times before he passed, and he –"

"Maurice," Adam interrupted him, shaking his head. "I don't want any family anecdotes right now, okay? I can't deal with my family history right now."

Maurice looked at the rigid profile of the young man beside him. "Sure."

He drew in a deep breath, looking back at the road and the taillights of the truck ahead of him. John's life had been a mess but it hadn't been of his choosing. He'd never seen a man so driven, so flogged and torn apart by what had happened to him, what had still been happening to him, those rare occasions they'd teamed up. He remembered waking in the night, in the depths of the Minnesota woods, waking abruptly to the noises made by the man sleeping on the other side of the fire. He hadn't asked John about those nightmares, but he'd never forgotten them either.

* * *

_**St Elphege Monastery, Tibet**_

He was in the top level of the library, flipping through an account of the life and deeds of an infamous English magician when the demon entered, eyes wide and black.

"Yes?"

"We've found something," the demon said, half-turning and gesturing.

"Something? Can you be more specific?"

"Something we can't touch, something that hurts to be near."

"Ah," he said, tucking the book under his arm and getting up. "That sounds more like it."

The demon looked questioningly at the book he carried and he glanced down, smiling at it. "Just a little bed-time reading," he said with a shrug. "Lead on."

He followed it down the uneven hall, and through a narrow, low doorway set into the rock wall. Stairs, roughly hewn and worn deeply in the centres, led down into the mountain.

The magician hadn't been much in life, the demon mused as he followed his minion. Delusional, he thought, mostly. Trying to fit too many disparate threads into a single metaphysical framework. But his heart had been in the right place. He wondered that no one had gone and offered him a deal, to make those desires and ambitions real, to bring real power to the man's life. But perhaps someone had and had been rejected. The name had a nice ring to it, though.

Winding and twisting, always down, he had to stoop a little where the ceiling of the tunnel hadn't been carved quite high enough for the height of the Manhattan publisher he was wearing. Good taste in clothes, he thought irrelevantly, a not-unappealing meatsuit. He'd managed to snag it before the Horseman had released the virus. Francis Taggert, Junior. He grimaced at the name. No, he liked the ring of the other better. _Aleister Crowley_. It would have a certain cachet in some circles.

The stairs opened into a long, low cavern, dry and musty and filled with baskets and boxes, chests and jars and containers of every sort, most of them rip open and torn apart now, spilling their contents, rare or precious or both, over the stone floor. Three demons stood to one side of a roughly constructed set of shelves, curling and writhing in place.

On the shelf, there was a featureless hunk of clay. Crowley reached out a finger and felt the frisson of energy reach through the clay and into his hand. Had he been without a vessel, he thought that the feel of that hunk of rock might have hurt him, repulsed him. It was the soul, imprisoned in its body, jammed up beneath him that allowed him to touch it.

The clay wasn't more than a few hundred years old, he realised belatedly as the information about it filtered into his mind through his touch. Re-wrapped? Or a decoy?

He sighed. There was only one way to find out. He picked it up from the shelf and looked around, wondering if the geological structure of the mountain was entirely stable. It was hard to say, and his mother had told him, over and over again in the small house that had smelled predominantly of cooked potatoes and the peat fire, it was better to be safe than sorry. He turned and walked back to the stairs, climbing them quickly, the stone heavy in his hand.

"Get rid of that," he told the demons, gesturing to the body lying on the stone paving of the open hall.

On every side the mountain ranges and the sky filled the open archways, an endless panorama of peak after peak. The thin, chill wind moaned slightly as it came down the white mantled slopes and twisted through the hall. In the centre, a circular hearth flickered with the dying remains of a fire, the coals glowing and fading as the wind brushed by them.

Crowley looked at the hunk of clay in his hands. Fortune and glory, he thought remotely and let it go.

It dropped to the floor and smashed, the clay flying off in pieces, and the demon crouched beside it. Inside the clay was a stone, smoothed and worn and engraved with symbols that were not – quite – Enochian. He laughed uneasily to himself at that fleeting knowledge. The throne had imparted more than just the power of the souls, he realised shakily. There was information in his mind that had not existed there before. Information of Hell. And of Heaven. And of the beings that dwelled there.

Flicking the loose fragments of clay aside, he felt a tingling in his fingers as they brushed the oily surface of the stone. Whatever it was, this tablet, it was powerful in ways he couldn't even imagine – and he could _imagine_ quite a bit.

* * *

_**Hayu Marca, Peru**_

The small herd of vicuña, grazing the flat puna valley leading down to the enormous lake, lifted their heads uncertainly. The watching female shrilled her cry of alarm, her head lifting when the ripple passed through the rock and moraine ground beneath her feet, shivering the long grasses. She turned sharply when she saw the herd had listened, her fine, silky fleece fluttering along her sides as she bounded up the rocky slope.

From the grassland, the underlying strata of the mountains protruded, dark red and inclined slabs. One had been carved, millennia ago, into the form of a door. A vast door for the gods, it had been believed, with no access to anything beyond but the charge of energy perceptible to any who'd laid their hands on the ancient rock.

The edges of the doorway split, and light seeped out, a flat, silvery light, growing as the cracks around the door widened. The rock groaned as the weight ground over the gravel and soils at its base and a deep shudder passed through the bones of the land, lifting the waters of the enormous lake for a second and dropping them.

The light spilled out now along the widening fissures, brightening argentine against the red stone, air rushing through the cracks, carrying the scent of the dead, of blood and fear and despair.

Two women emerged from the split in the rock face. One was extremely fair, milk-white skin and pale eyes, long, white hair ghosting around her narrow face in the wind that reached out from behind her into the world. The other was dark. Deeply tanned skin, long, black hair, thick and heavy, dark eyes that narrowed in a square, broad face, looking around as she stepped out onto the grass.

As they passed through it, the rock face returned to what it had been, sealed and solid, a carving, not a doorway.

The pale woman looked at her sister. "The earth calls."

"It is time," the dark woman agreed.

They turned away from each other, striding out over the altiplano, the length of their strides increasing until in moments, they'd vanished from sight.

Over the hill, the herd of vicuña looked up again, the male shivering with overwhelming arousal. He called to the females, singing his song to them and they cushed for him, filled with the same desire, instinct driving them. He walked to the closest, and wound his neck gently around hers, crooning softly into her ear.

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

There were no windows in the order's stronghold. That was something she missed, Ellen thought, staring at the book-lined walls of the office. To be able to open a window, look out over fields and woods, feel the soft summer breezes on her skin at night. She sighed and dragged her attention back to the two men sitting on either side of the long desk.

"There were twenty-nine of them," Dean was saying to Bobby. "Together, and they had a strategy."

Bobby frowned, shaking his head. "Skinwalkers don't pack up much bigger than nine or ten –"

"That's what Dad's journal says as well," Dean cut him off impatiently. "And Jim's. Doesn't change the fact that they were there – decoys, two fronts of attack … they knew what they were doing."

Ellen looked at him, seeing the shadows under his eyes, the lines drawn on his face that weren't there when he'd left for the city. Having to kill Isaac had been a blow that he wasn't coming back from, she thought apprehensively. There was a lot of weight on him, had been for three years now. Longer, she realised sourly. Since she'd met him he'd been carrying a load that was slowly but surely grinding him down.

"An' what do you want to do about it?" Bobby sighed, leaning back in his chair.

"Vince said that the ghouls were getting fresh kills," Dean said slowly, rubbing his hand over his eyes. He was bone-tired and he wanted to get some sleep, but the urgency he could feel thrumming along his nerves wasn't going to allow that. "And the pack – they had to have found people to turn somewhere to get that big."

"You think there's a big group of survivors somewhere?" Ellen frowned at him, her mind ticking through the possibilities of where such a group could be. "Where?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "There were all the free civilians from the cities – we didn't see them in Atlanta, everyone we pulled out of there was branded."

He dragged in a deep breath and looked at them. "We're just about done with the supply runs. We need to do some looking around for them."

Bobby nodded. "Yeah, no argument there. Where do you want to start?"

"Wichita, maybe," Dean said. "Then St Louis."

"You think they'd be in the cities?"

"I don't know, Bobby," he said tiredly. "Those people were free 'cause they were the smart ones, weren't they? Could do the technical jobs? Maybe they figured out a few places where there were still canned goods? Maybe they're in farm country … I don't know."

Ellen looked at him. "No matter what else they can do, they can't live without food, or shelter. I'll talk to Jackson tomorrow, see if he knows of any place that might fit." She got up from her chair and walked to the desk. "Have you eaten? I can get you something?"

He shook his head. "No, I want to get back to town."

He hadn't even stopped there, just driven straight out here. Hadn't even seen Alex or let her know he was still in one piece. The thought brought ambivalent feelings. He had responsibilities, to the people here, to the future … and the longing he could barely admit to was sublimated beneath those responsibilities, pushed aside as a personal indulgence he thought he didn't have the same right to feel.

"Go and get something to eat, Dean, and some sleep. You're no good to anyone burned out." Bobby got to his feet. "We'll talk to the others in the morning, figure out some kind of roster. Franklin's moved down to Lebanon, says we need soldiers for the holds. I think he's right. The hunters need to be looking for people, cleaning out whatever comes into our area. We should be able to leave the defences to the able-bodied."

He acknowledged that with a slight tilt of his head, getting up. "Anything more on the tablets?"

"There're myths," Ellen said, with a sniff. "But nothing concrete, not even about the Watchers."

A thought tickled the back of Dean's mind, but he was too tired to make it come clear. He shrugged it off and turned for the door. "See you in the morning."

Looking at his watch as he got into the Impala, his face screwed up when he registered the time. Long past midnight. He hesitated with his fingers on the key, wondering if he should just stay here, take Ellen up on her offer of food and find a sofa in one of the offices for the night.

He turned the key and the engine rumbled into life. She would be asleep, he thought, and he didn't have the right to just come and go, disrupting her life, even when his was falling apart. But he put the car into gear anyway, foot pressing on the accelerator as he turned the wheel and drove out through the illusions and back to the asphalt road leading into town.

* * *

The four room apartment was located in the second keep that Liev had built in the fortress he'd made of the town, facing west and south. A kitchen and bathroom, large living area and bedroom, with a short hall that gave access to all, comprised its design. Finding furniture had been difficult and the mismatched pieces that filled the rooms had been scrounged from houses that had been protected, from the basements and store-rooms of the surviving camps in Michigan, dragged out with them, or from the rare stores that'd had a large amount of stock on site, wrapped and packed away and left alone by the angel of the abyss.

Dean looked around automatically as he walked through the door and closed it behind him, feeling an involuntary easing of his tension as he took in the comfortable room, the smell of food cooking.

Alex walked out of the kitchen and straight to him. He saw immediately that she knew what had happened. Saw too that she knew what he felt. She slipped her arms around him and, for a moment, he leaned against her, letting that simplest of contacts take some of the weight, a welcomed respite from the pain.

The abrupt flutter of shame that rose in him, shame and a twisting sensation of guilt, was too complex for him to understand completely even though it was as familiar to him as the sound of the black car's engine. He pulled away, looking down at her.

"I guess you heard what happened," he said, mouth twisting.

"I heard you had a bad day," she said gently, a slight crease marring her forehead as she looked up at him.

"Yeah, that's one way to put it." He stepped back. "I thought you'd be asleep."

"No, I had some stuff I had to finish up," Alex said, gesturing in the direction of the desk as she watched him. "Are you hungry? There's venison stew?"

"That'd be good."

He watched her turn and walk away to the kitchen and he sat down, pushing aside his recognition of the question that had been in her face, the feelings that were churning just below the surface. It was just tiredness, he told himself. A long, fucking horrible day and tiredness.

Alex sat at the table, watching him eat. He wasn't much for words. Wasn't used to articulating the way he thought or felt. She knew that about him, had known it for a long time. The times when he'd told her the things about himself, those had been aberrations, not the norm, not intended but spilling out because he hadn't been able to deal with them on his own, on the inside, any longer.

"And you think that there're people still out there, in one of the cities?" she asked, aware she was deliberately keeping the conversation general. He needed time and she could give him that, at least.

"Can't think of any other explanation," he said, mopping up the sauce in his bowl with a hunk of the freshly baked bread she'd put out with it. "That's not the only problem," he added, pushing the clean bowl aside and picking up his beer. "Normally, ghouls or skinwalkers, they stay in packs but not very big ones – they don't tolerate their own kind all that well."

"They turn on each other?"

He nodded. "But Vince said there were fifty ghouls in Omaha, covering a twenty block radius. And we saw twenty nine in the skinwalker pack in Kansas City."

"One increase might have been situational, an anomaly, but both is pushing the odds a bit," she agreed, getting up and taking the dishes to the sink. "What could cause something like that?"

Dean leaned back in the chair and shook his head. "I don't know. Jerome'll get his people to look for it, but … it's weird too," he hesitated, hearing the words and grimacing. "Weirder, I mean, than everything else."

Alex came back to the table, sitting down and looking at him thoughtfully as she turned over what he'd said against what she knew of the world, of predators and prey.

"Because the population is smaller now, smaller than it's been for more than two thousand years?"

"Yeah," he said, a little surprised she'd picked that up so quickly. "Why would any predator population increase so much when there won't be enough food for them?"

* * *

The bedroom was lit by a single candle, the flame bright and steady and reflecting the sheen of sweat that covered their skin as they clung to each other, their breathing harsh in the still room, waiting as the aftershocks and tremors bled out of them slowly.

His cheek resting against the slope of her breast, eyes closed, Dean felt his heartrate steady, heard hers decreasing as well. Images still played out against the blackness of his closed lids, each one sending a crackling reaction along sensitised nerves, a thick shiver of warm pleasure that left his body heavy and loose, finally free of the tension and pain of the last few days. He felt her hand slip through his hair, stroking the back of his neck, and he exhaled deeply, letting the poisons go, shedding them gladly.

Lifting his head, he found her lips, the kiss tentative at first, intensifying as she returned it. He felt his own desperation, wordlessly trying to tell her what he couldn't say out loud, couldn't bring himself to admit to, even in this most private intimacy, felt it with a hopelessness, that he was still trying to hold back, even when he couldn't.

_You close the gates of Hell and Heaven._

It was a weakness, to want her so much, to need her so much, to feel it reach all the way through him. He couldn't afford any weaknesses, not in this life, not with what was coming. His father'd had that weakness, his only weakness, perhaps. Driven by the death of one loved dearly.

_I want to stop losing the people we love …_

He'd spent years trying not to care, telling himself that love was something other people did, something that other people felt. But when he'd looked down at her, under the collapsed church, when he'd seen the erratic pulse against the thin, pale skin of her throat, he'd known he might as well have saved himself the effort.

Was it a selfish thing, what he wanted? To feel the weight lift, to have a place to rest, to be himself? His mother had brought evil to their lives, despairing and reckless and believing she could handle it. She'd never even told his father that there was a risk. His arms tightened involuntary around Alex with the thought. It wasn't the same, he told himself, Alex knew what he knew, he'd never try to hide the risk from her. And it was a risk, he thought. Everyone close to him was at risk.

"Dean," Alex whispered against his lips and he leaned back a little, looking into her eyes.

"He was just a kid," he said, hearing the question and shaking his head a little.

"But there wasn't a choice."

"No," he agreed unwillingly. There hadn't been a choice. He wondered sometimes if it made it harder or easier that she understood those things. She'd lived a life with no choices, he knew. It changed the way a person saw things.

She didn't try to tell him that he'd done the right thing or that he'd get over it, didn't try and pretend it didn't exist or that it wasn't another wound, another scar. She drew him down, her lips warm and soft on his, not stirring, not this time. Comforting. Accepting. Letting him be.

Here, in her arms, he wasn't Dean Winchester, he wasn't a hunter, unofficial leader, raised from Hell, angel vessel, servant of God, legacy, brother or anything else. He was just Dean. Just the man he'd been trying to become from the moment he'd run from a burning house with his baby brother in his arms and the sure knowledge there really was evil in the world.

Pushing the unresolvable tangle of thoughts away, he moved slightly under her, exhaustion finally taking command. He couldn't walk away and he couldn't ask her for everything because he couldn't give her everything. He'd been struggling with the conflict for the last two months and was no closer to finding an answer. Against his side, Alex wriggled down, her head tucked into the hollow of his shoulder, one arm across his ribs. He found it hard to believe her acceptance of him, sometimes. Hard to believe it would last.

_I do, you know._

His eyelids closed and he pulled in a deep breath, the scent of her filling him as consciousness vanished with the memory.


	2. Chapter 2 Blood and Breath

**Chapter 2 Blood and Breath**

* * *

_**September 2012, Lebanon, Kansas**_

The little town, now a fortress, wasn't surrounded by the flat, open plains that were the usual perception of Kansas. The land rolled gently, low hills and river courses dividing the farms and holdings from each other. The fields of grain, however, hip-high and golden, bending and bowing with every tremble of wind, did resemble the inland seas of the prairie. The oats had finished in August and the silos and sacks were safely filled and stored with that grain. The big barns held the bales of hay and straw that would go to feeding their stock over the winter months. Wheat hadn't been an option this year, but they would plant winter wheat and rye after the harvest for next season. Today and for the next few days it would be corn, then barley.

Jackson looked suspiciously at the bright sky, faded blue eyes narrowed in the early morning light. The run of good weather had held for an unseasonably long time, and it raised the hairs on the back of his neck to trust that it would continue. Farming wasn't ever easy, but it was the unpredictability of the weather that really broke the spirit. When Mother Nature decided to be capricious, an entire year's work could be ruined with too little rain at the right time, or too much.

The dew would have dried off the corn in another hour, he thought, feeling the heat in the sunshine even this early. He had twenty five combines, and drivers for all of them; sixty grain trucks and a dozen tractors pulling chaser bins, enough to let the combines run without stopping, and all of them waiting patiently along the edges of the first fields. And empty silos and barns, waiting to be filled.

A burst of laughter, from the shade of the young oaks that had regrown between the fields and the farmyard, drew his attention. Trestle tables had been set up since before first light, lines of them beneath the still-full, spreading canopies, and food was set out, loaves of bread and baskets of rolls, cakes and pies, casseroles and roasted meat as cold cuts, salads and bowls of sliced, fresh vegetables from the truck gardens, condiments and pickles and conserves from the early and mid-season fruit and vegetables. Everyone who wasn't old enough or strong enough or skilled enough to help in harvesting was working the tables and the trestles were groaning under the weight of dishes pre-cooked the previous evening and brought along to feed the men and women working the fields. The sight constricted his chest, just a little. It'd been a long time since he'd seen this kind of community activity on a farm. A long, long time. It'd been common enough when he'd been a small boy, but not in the years since.

He glanced around as Dean walked across the farmyard, followed by his tall, younger brother and Rufus.

"'Bout an hour," Jackson said, forestalling the question he knew was coming. "Gotta wait for the sun to dry off the dew, then we can go. Got time to grab some breakfast 'fore you get started."

Dean nodded. The drivers were almost all hunters, along with the few experienced farmers and contractors that had come out here from Michigan, most hunters having had experience driving just about anything. He'd spent a couple of hours the previous day running the combine, with Riley sitting in the narrow cab next to him. The innards of the complicated machines were fortunately being left to the farmers to handle.

"This going to be enough? For everyone here?"

Jackson gave him a dry grin. "We got a little under six thousand acres planted this year," he told Dean. "Oats, corn, barley. We'll see about twenty-five hundred tons per day, give or take breakdowns and the trucks running up fast enough to keep us on the go. Oats are in. Barley after the corn, and then planting again for the wheat and rye. Gives us variety, seed and stock feed." He cast a jaundiced eye at the sky again, careful not to mention the weather. "We'll do okay."

* * *

The glare of the bright sunshine from the fields, worse when they turned where they'd been and the short stubble caught the light. The roar of the engines. The thick dust and chaff that flew everywhere, infiltrating clothing and the tractor cabins and truck cabs whose rubber seals had been devoured and not replaced, sticking to the skin and hair as the day got hotter and everyone working in the fields sweated and burned and coughed. The dry smell of the grain and the thick fumes of the diesel motors. Keeping in straight lines and making wide turns, the truck drivers watching the mirrors and harvesters constantly as the grain was pulled by the augers and flowed down into the hoppers behind them. Not a cloud in sight and the wide, wide sky bleaching slowly out to white as the day progressed. The blessed cool of the shade under the trees and the bubbles of chilled beer washing out lips and tongues and mouths and throats and the thick sandwiches that were handed out to everyone as they came in and rested and got up and went back out.

Alex passed Dean a damp towel, smiling as he wiped the fine dust from his eyes and looked blearily around, his vision slow to adjust to the dimness under the trees after the painful glare of the stripped fields. His habitual plaid shirt had been abandoned in the cab of the harvester and the t-shirt he was wearing, that had started out a pale grey when he'd put it on in the morning, had darkened to charcoal, wet with sweat and dust and oil.

"How do you like farming?" she asked, taking the towel as she handed him a bottle of beer, condensation running down the cold glass when he tipped it up and swallowed half in a couple of gulps.

"I have a new respect for the man on the land," he told her sourly, finishing the beer and taking the roll she passed him. "S'alright for you wimmenfolk, sittin' around in the shade –"

"Alex, time's up, truck twelve," Terry called out from across the yard. "Riley's your loader."

"I'll take that apology when I get back," she said to Dean, smiling as she pulled the bandana around her neck back up over her nose and walked away toward the line of waiting trucks and hoppers.

"I'll make it a slow one," he yelled after her, seeing her hand rise briefly in acknowledgement. Taking a bite of the sandwich, he watched her climb into the truck cab and start the engine, the vehicle moving out of line and following the dusty track to the fields to the south.

"Where's the beer?" Sam said behind him, and he turned, gesturing to the barrel beside the table.

"Drink fast," Ellen told them, bringing another tray of thick sandwiches and packed rolls and setting it down in front of them. "You've got fifteen minutes off and then you're back into it."

"Slave labour," Dean remarked around his mouthful, reaching out to take another roll from the platter.

"All feeding you through the winter," she retorted, passing two more beers from the barrel and loading a tray with more for the rest of the table. "Haven't seen Bobby have this much fun since that turkey shoot in '08," she added, jerking her head toward the fields.

"I remember that," Sam said, swallowing quickly. "Wasn't that the time that you and Jo nearly set the roadhouse kitchen on fi–"

"No time for reminiscing, boys, got work to do," Ellen cut him off smoothly and headed down the table.

Sam exchanged a glance with his brother, one brow lifted. Looking at him, Dean was happy to see his brother's despair washed away, even if temporarily. He looked younger, he thought. Younger and lighter in spirit than he'd seen him for a long time.

Sam was thinking the same thing, glad to see laughter in his older brother's eyes instead of worry. For all that happened, for all that they'd fought for and won and lost, this life wasn't so bad, he thought, taking another bite of the doorstop sandwich in his hands and washing it down with a long pull of beer.

* * *

They finished the day's run a little after sunset, checking over the machines in the floodlit yard, looking for worn belts, leaking oil, dry bearings and replacing everything that looked even remotely suspect as the trucks lined up beside the silos and unloaded the grain.

Dean put down the grease gun, and twisted the nipple over the bearings, straightening up with a long exhale.

"Hot bath," Riley suggested as he stopped beside him, his gaze going over the combine carefully.

"Not sure I have the energy," Dean retorted, feeling his body creaking as he stretched.

The farmer turned to him. "Jackson said you boys'll be heading out, looking for other people?"

Dean nodded. "Sometime, after we're finished here."

"You stick around a few more days, help with the planting?" Riley's gaze cut to one side. "Not many keep a nice, straight line."

Dean considered it. "If nothing else comes up, yeah. Sure."

"Thanks." The older man turned away, lanky frame throwing an elongated shadow over the dirt yard as he passed under the floodlights. Dean watched him go, a faint smile lifting one side of his mouth. Those few words were, for the taciturn farmer, the highest of praise, and an offer of friendship, and he recognised it as such.

He walked out of the yard, heading for the lane, pulling the long-sleeved flannelette shirt back on as the evening began to cool. They'd be back here tomorrow, first thing, to finish the last thousand acres. And at least a couple of days next week to bring in the barley, he thought, only a little wearily. As jobs went, it was satisfying, at least. He could see the results straight away, the trucks filled with their loads of gold and the fields bare where they'd been. He liked the simplicity of it, liked the easy camaraderie of everyone working together with one goal.

"Alex," he called out, seeing her by the house talking to Jackson, loaded down with the now-empty baskets and dishes she'd brought in the morning. She turned and saw him, lengthening her stride across the lane to meet him.

"How're you feeling?"

He shook his head, opening the passenger door for her. "Don't ask."

"Hot bath," she told him as he got into the driver's seat. He smiled a little.

"Yeah, that's what Riley told me," he said. "You gonna help?"

"Ask me nicely, and I'll consider it."

* * *

Father Emilio walked up to the table under the shade of the trees, the brown robe over one arm, a once-white t-shirt and faded drill trousers coated in dust and darkened with sweat, showing a tall, lean frame, muscles clearly delineated under the clinging fabric. He dropped the robe over the back of a chair and accepted the glass of water Alex held out gratefully.

Behind him, Sam and Adam, along with a few of the hunter trainees and a dozen equally dusty and sweat-soaked civilians staggered into the cool darkness under the canopy and dropped into the simple wooden chairs, taking the big glasses of cool water as they were poured out, drinking them down fast.

The priest looked at Alex, sitting on the opposite side of the table, the ledgers for each hold and the order spread out around her.

"An' how did you get this job, Alex, cool and relaxed under the trees?" he asked her, sitting down as he set the empty glass down and leaning across the table.

"Wanna trade?" she asked him, pushing the books toward him. "I'll take the fields any day of the week."

He laughed. "No, no, I have nothing left for the calculations of bushels and tons per acre per day!"

"Have Jackson or Riley asked you to help with the planting yet, Father?" She reached for the jug of water and refilled his glass.

"Thank you. Yes, both of them," he said dryly, picking it up.

"You drive a mean straight line," Sam said, holding out his glass for Alex as he took the chair next to the priest. She filled it and watched him thoughtfully. Under the fine white dust and chaff, his skin was red and peeling, the flash of his smile bright against it. He looked better, she thought, a lot better. More relaxed, more … himself, maybe, although she didn't really know what he'd been like before Atlanta. Dean had commented on the change last night, his relief palpable as he'd relaxed in the hot bath she'd run for him. She watched Father Emilio grin at him, the uncomplicated and mutual liking between the two men obvious.

"Ah … so if I add a few wobbles," he said, waggling his hand from side to side in demonstration. "I'll be – what is the phrase? Off the hook?"

"Too late," Sam said, shaking his head in mock sympathy. "They've already seen your quality."

"Story of my life," Father Emilio said sadly. He looked at Alex, brow lifted curiously. "And Dean, he is planting as well?"

"So long as Rufus and Maurice don't find anything in the couple of weeks," she said, looking up as Billy brought her another dozen slips of paper from the silos. Taking them from him, she pulled the ledgers close to her again and started writing.

"If we get all the barley in by the end of the week, you'll be starting next week," she added, her gaze going to the horizon. The last two days there'd been a thin line of grey along the south-western line of low hills. Jackson had been muttering about it non-stop.

"You think the weather will break before tomorrow?" The priest turned around to follow her gaze.

"Riley does," Sam said, finishing his water and setting the glass down. "Thinks we'll get a storm tonight, maybe. Or tomorrow at the latest."

The humidity had been building slowly since the lunch break, the ground crumbling and dry.

"What does that mean, in terms of the food we're storing?" Father Emilio looked from Sam to Alex quizzically.

Alex tapped the open ledger with the end of her pen. "More stock feed, that's all. We've got enough to feed our population, and enough for seed for next year's planting now. If it rains tonight, the rest can be baled for hay, once it's dry again, or packed as silage."

"And the planting?"

"You'll be ploughing in the remains of the crops and ready to seed on time," Alex told him with a faint smile as she finished the entries. She tucked the slips into the back of each hold's ledger and closed them.

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Lebanon**_

Bobby groaned as Ellen's hands worked firmly over his back. "What happened to TLC?"

"You want pampering or you want to be able to get up in the morning?" she asked tartly, taking another handful of the paste Oliver had made up for her and rubbing it firmly into the muscles.

"You talk to Dean today?" he asked, changing the subject since he didn't want yet another conversation to end with the woman being right.

"Didn't even see him today," she said. "Why?"

"Rufus didn't check in on sked tonight."

"That's not too unusual, is it?"

"Sometimes not, sometimes it is," Bobby hedged, uncertain of how worried he wanted her to be – or how much he wanted her to see of his worry. "The check in, while they're hunting, was something we'd agreed on."

"Might be in a black spot?" she suggested, working back up his spine and over his shoulders.

"Yeah, might be," Bobby sighed. He wasn't sure if he should be raising an alarm about it or not. Anson was on a twelve-hour shift tonight, he could check with him to see if the hunter had tried a bit later.

The uncharacteristic behaviour of the skinwalkers in Kansas City and the ghouls in Omaha was worrying him more than he was ready to admit to, just yet. Dean had voiced the obvious question already – they were predators, why were they increasing their numbers when their prey had been drastically reduced? None of it made for good bed-time thoughts.

"Nightcap?" Ellen poured two glasses of whiskey and handed him one as he sat up. "Where was Rufus yesterday?"

"Amarillo."

She looked at him, brows shooting up. "Texas?"

"Know of any others?" he asked dryly, giving her a one-sided smile. "He wanted to check out the possibilities between here and Austin."

"But he hadn't found anything?"

Bobby shook his head. "No, Austin was empty, stripped clean of everything, he said. And Amarillo looked to be the same, at least it did yesterday."

"And everyone was okay then?" she pressed him, brow creased as she tried to imagine what could have happened between then and now. Amarillo wasn't a black spot. Far from it.

"Yeah, he said they'd do a sweep, and then head north." He shrugged, tossing the contents of his glass back.

"You want to see Dean now?"

"No, I'll see him tomorrow," Bobby said, putting his glass down and looking at her. "Nothin' we can do tonight."

"I'll argue that," she said, slipping her arm around him.

"Nothin' about Rufus," he corrected himself, shunting the worries and concerns he had aside. The hunter was more than capable and he had Mel with him, wasn't like he was out there on his ownsome with just the trainees.

* * *

_**Ghost Valley Farm, Lebanon**_

The cloud came racing north as the combines rumbled onto the last field, black and grey and white, covering the sky and forcing the drivers to turn on the headlights, the light vanished so quickly. Dean peered out through the first spatters of drops against the flat windshield, seeing the grain field lashing as the wind grew stronger, blinking as a bolt of lightning struck a few miles off, lighting the fields in front of him to a stark chiaroscuro. Glancing to his right, he saw Bobby roll down the window of the truck, leaning out, his words lost in the cacophony of the rising howl of the wind and the enormous hiss of the undulating crop, the basso profundo of the thunder's voice and the sizzling, deafening cracks of lightning bolts that were striking all around them.

The old man drew his hand across his throat as he pointed back toward the house, and Dean nodded, understanding that charade anyway. Slowing the harvester down to idle, he disengaged the thresher and waved Bobby away, unlocking the auger and climbing out to push it back into position.

In the time it took for him to push it back, lock it down and turn around, the heavens opened and rain bucketed down, the force bouncing the drops back up from the field where the grain had been cut and sweeping them off the long grasses where it hadn't, spuming out ahead of the wind like the spindrift of a storm at sea. Dean ducked his head and felt his way back to the cab, yanking on the door and diving in and dragging the door shut behind him. He had zero visibility to the front, the combine's wipers whipping back and forth across the glass, having no impact whatsoever on the water that sheeted down, turning everything in his headlights to a smeary and distorted mix of colours without definition.

He flicked on the overhead lights, the four powerful spot lamps that shone for thirty yards to the front and sides of the harvester, and pushed the machine into forward, trundling over the field at idling speed, uncertain of his direction. He couldn't see any other lights, not from the other machines, not from the house, and he twisted around in the cab, looking behind him as he tried to remember which way he'd been going when the storm had hit. South, he thought, away from the buildings. Turning the combine slowly, he was rewarded a minute later by a very dim glow in the right hand corner of the windshield and he let out his breath as he headed for it.

The yard was a quagmire by the time he reached it, and he could just see the figure in the yellow slicker ahead, tall but completely hidden by the rain gear, waving its arms to direct him along the grassed verge rather than risk the machine in the thick mud. He made the turn, just, and felt the huge tyres grip and lurch forward, seeing the big three-sided shed ahead of him, with the rest of the harvesters already parked inside.

There was a moment he thought he wasn't going to make it across the slippery morass of churned up dirt and gravel that divided the yard from the shed, but in first, the weight and torque managed to give the tyres just enough help to slide and stagger across, and he felt the change when the fronts rose up on the concrete floor of the shed, running a hand over his face as he nosed it up to the back wall and shut it all down.

_Still have to figure out how to get back to the car_, he thought, climbing down from the cab and walking to the edge of the concrete floor. The rain was showing no signs of letting up at all, not even easing, and the huge bolts of lightning were still striking to every quarter, filling the air with the burned-battery stench of ozone and crackling energy.

He swung around as he caught the movement in the corner of his eye, relaxing his grip on the Colt tucked into his belt behind his hip as he recognised Jackson, flapping in head-to-foot oilskins and carrying more bundled up in his arms.

The older man leaned close, half-shouting to be heard over the din of the rain on the metal roof above them.

"Get these on, they won't help much but you can pretend they do!"

Grinning, he pulled a long coat free of the bundle and dragged it on. He was already saturated to the skin, and a bit more water wasn't going to hurt him, but the slickers were an eye-searing safety yellow and he wouldn't get run over by a vehicle unable to see anything in front of it in the pouring rain while he was wearing it. Might blind the driver, he considered, shaking his head at the long pants Jackson held out.

They crossed the mud pond together, hunched over with the fierce drops drumming on the water-proof material almost as loudly as it had on the shed's tin roof and reaching the broad, stone-flagged porch of the house with forty or fifty pounds of the yard adhering to their boots.

"You seen Alex?" he asked the farmer, scraping off the thick, viscous mud on the boot scraper by the door.

"She left an hour ago, took the ledgers back," Jackson said, nodding.

"Who'd she go with?"

"Bobby and Ellen, I think."

Dean shrugged inwardly. If she was back in the fortress, he didn't need to worry about finding her and getting them both home through the storm. He dragged his soaked boots off and looked sourly down at his equally soaked and muddy socks. Wasn't much point to keeping them on, he thought. Peeling them off, he left them with the boots on the porch, turning to follow Jackson inside.

The farmhouses on the big farms had been protected by the order with Gabriel's sigil, Jerome sending out Aaron and Frances and Oliver to paint the symbols over them. At the time the legacy'd been thinking of requesting more people from Michigan purely to feed themselves, he'd told Dean later. Now, it was a godsend to have the farm buildings and houses, the barns and silos all intact and able to do their jobs. Jackson and Riley lived in Crows Nest, a keep and village within a high double wall built of stone and brick and filled with salt and iron slag and rubble, a mile to the north-west of the town. It had been built on the peak of the highest hill in the area, the name a gentle mockery of its height. Around fifty metres taller than the town centre, the outlook didn't give much advantage. Jackson had been pushing at Liev to fortify the houses on the major farms, though. Both the farmers wanted to be a lot closer to the stock and fields than they currently were.

The house held the furniture that had been there when a family had been in residence, most of it covered with dust sheets, but the living room and dining room had been opened up, a fire going in the hearth of the generously proportioned room, and a dozen people in various states of undress were attempting to dry their clothes in front of it. He lifted a hand to his brother as he passed by, following the scent of hot food and the old farmer to the kitchen.

Standing in front of the stove, a young woman with long, dark hair loosely braided in a sheaf that hung down her back, looked vaguely familiar, he thought, though he couldn't remember where he'd seen her. When she turned around to look at him, he saw dark blue eyes in a pretty oval face.

"The teacher, right?" he hazarded a guess, one brow raised. She smiled and nodded as she ladled out a bowl of the thick stew from the pot on the stove and gestured to the basket of bread on the heavy pine table.

"Rebecca, that's right," she said, handing him the bowl. "And you are?"

"Dean Winchester," he said, lifting a piece of bread and smearing a knifeful of butter over it. He looked up, catching her expression of surprise. "What?"

A flush of red rose up her neck and into her cheeks as she turned away. "Sorry, I didn't realise … I, uh, thought you'd be … um … older."

Dean paused in mid-chew, frowning slightly at her. "Older than what?"

From the mud-room door that led into the kitchen, he heard Jackson's snort. "Older than you are to be running this outfit," the farmer said, smirking as he came back through the door minus his wet-weather clothing.

"Don't you worry, Rebecca, what he lacks in age, he makes up for in recklessness," Jackson said, taking a bowl from her and sitting across the table from Dean.

"Hilarious," Dean muttered through a mouthful of bread. He glanced back at the young woman standing by the stove. Was that the uninformed view of him, some … wise and seasoned soldier, or statesman or leader? He wasn't sure if the idea was terrifying or ludicrous. Or both.

"You staying put 'til this passes over?" Jackson asked, looking up and past him as Riley came in, walking past the table to the mud-room to dump his gear.

"Not much point in sliding off the road," Dean said with a shrug.

Riley glanced at Jackson as he took the bowl Rebecca offered him, sitting at the end of the table and taking a piece of bread. "Still cats and dogs out there. Barley'll take a month to dry out."

"We can make silage," Jackson suggested mildly.

"Not enough plastic."

The older farmer laughed sourly. "The old-fashioned way," he clarified. "Dig pits and fill 'em and cover 'em over."

"What's silage?" Dean asked, pushing his empty bowl aside.

"Grain hay, packed tight. It heats up, solidifies into a solid mass. Keeps the nutrients that way," Jackson said, running his bread around the bowl.

"Will the stock eat that?" Dean asked, looking from one to the other doubtfully.

"Cattle will," Riley said. "Never tried sheep on it, probably not."

"We'll have enough feed anyway, just don't need to waste it."

Patrice came into the kitchen and looked at the three men, dripping onto the floor. In her early fifties, she'd been headmistress of a private and exclusive girls' school before the virus. Two years in Austin as a slave hadn't dimmed her spirit or her will, just turned her hair from ash blonde to silver. She made a noise in the back of her throat and walked to Rebecca.

"Rebecca, grab the clothes from the folks in the parlour, there's a perfectly good industrial dryer sitting in the laundry that will dry their gear a lot faster than the fire will," she said briskly to the younger woman then turned to the men sitting at the table. "You want to get out of those wet clothes; we can run them through as well. There're blankets in the upstairs linen closet that'll keep you modest until they're done."

Turning back for the door, she swept out and they heard the thumps of her feet going up the stairs.

"Heard she was sweet on you, Jackson," Riley said with a slight grin.

"Don't need a mother," Jackson said, giving him a sour look as he pushed his chair back and got to his feet. "Don't need a wife either."

He paused at the end of the table, looking speculatively at Dean. "Got a deck of cards," he said casually. "If you're staying might as well play some poker."

Dean caught Riley's expression as he considered it.

"He cheats," Riley confided, sliding a look at the older man. Jackson turned at the doorway, his mouth dropping open in outrage.

"This from the man who managed to get five queens last game!"

Watching them, Dean decided against it. Not the stakes were likely to be high, but he had the feeling the two of them were far too well-versed in working together to flatten an opponent.

"I'll pass," he said, getting up as Rebecca came back into the kitchen with an armload of wet clothes, heading for the laundry. "Coupla sharps like you two, be out of my league."

"Some leader," Jackson muttered derisively at him as he walked to the door.

Dean laughed. "Reckless was your description, not mine."

* * *

The bed was comfortable, he was tired, the sound of the rain on the roof was steady and soothing, awakening very old memories of lying snug and warm in a bed with that noise on the roof. But he couldn't sleep.

It took Dean almost an hour and a half of restless turning to realise why. He'd been listening. Listening for the soft whisper of breath that some part of him thought should've been there. He rolled onto his back, scowling at the ceiling.

It'd taken him about three months to get used to the fact that Sam's snoring was no longer a part of the regular night noises he could dismiss. It'd taken longer to get used to the sounds Lisa had made, the shift of her weight in the bed they'd shared and the occasional brush of her skin against his in the darkness. He hadn't realised that in a few weeks, when he was sleeping in a bed, he expected Alex to be there, expected to hear that soft whisper of breath in the silent dark, expected to be able to roll over and slide up against her. It hadn't affected him in Kansas City. On a hunt – even a hunt for supplies – it was an automatic difference, an automatic mental adjustment, but here … the mattress and soft sheets and light down quilt had fooled him.

Apparently, he thought, leaning on one elbow to thump his pillow into puffiness, there was no end to the ways he could be fucked over by the want he didn't even allow himself to acknowledge.

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Lebanon**_

Ellen slid the pan of eggs into a dish and pulled the biscuits from the oven, filling another plate with them as Aaron came to take the food into the dining room. Oliver lifted the strips of bacon from the broiler, nostrils flaring as he savoured the scent. Bacon, and ham for that matter, tended to be a delicacy, available at some times and not others. The small herd of free-range swine in Michigan had multiplied enough for a couple of boar and several sows to be relocated to Kansas, but it would be a couple of years before the meat was commonplace again. He loaded a platter with the strips and followed Aaron and Ellen into the dining room.

At the long polished table, the residents of the order sat in their usual chairs, loading their plates or sipping coffee. Looking around at them, Ellen thought she'd have to get Bobby out of here. The library was a marvellous resource, and she liked Jerome and Felix, Aaron, Oliver and Marla well enough, but the newest residents were not her kind of folk.

She looked up as Marla stopped at the doorway to the room, her eyes huge. "Bobby? I think I've got a transmission from Rufus."

Bobby, Jerome and Ellen got up immediately and followed her down to the situation room, the hiss and crackle of the radio audible from the library.

"Rufus?" Bobby picked up the mike, sliding into the chair at the same time. "You there, man?"

"Bob, got … here," Rufus' voice came across the airwaves through clouds of static, dropping out in chunks. " –rillo … nest …"

"Rufus, say again, all after 'here'," Bobby said, face screwing up as he fiddled with the tuner, trying to find a clearer signal.

"In Amarillo," Rufus' voice blasted out in a clear patch. "Vampire nest … down … west … Route Forty … can't … Mel … tra–"

"Amarillo, vampire nest," Bobby repeated. "You trapped there?"

"Yeah, need … now, goddammit!"

"We're on our way, Rufus," Bobby said quickly. "Stay put, we're comin'."

He put the mike back on the radio and swivelled around to look at Ellen. She nodded sharply and turned, half-running for their room and gear. He looked at Aaron.

"Get down to town and find Dean, we'll meet him at the gates as soon as he can get there."

Aaron nodded and raced up the stairs.

Jerome looked at Bobby, brows lifted in astonishment. "You're going along?"

Bobby gave him a sour grin. "Walking again, might as well see if I can run and fight as well."

* * *

_**Ghost Valley Farm, Lebanon**_

The big kitchen was bright with sunshine, the storm passed on in the night and the sky washed to a clean, bright blue again. Dean sat at the scrubbed pine table, fingers curled around the mug of coffee and his head resting on one hand.

"You have a big night?" Sam asked as he took in the shadows under his brother's eyes and their slightly unfocussed, baleful expression.

Dean ignored the comment. Sam smiled to himself and pulled down a cup from the shelf, pouring himself a coffee.

"Riley said we're off duty until everything dries off," he said, sitting down at the end of the table.

"I'm heading back to town, you want a ride?" Dean looked at him.

"Sure," Sam said. "So what happened to you last night?"

"Nothing."

"Uh-huh."

Dean tilted his head slightly, looking at Sam from under his brow. "Finish your coffee, we're going."

He drained the remains of his mug and got up, taking it to the sink and heading for the door, ignoring his brother's grin as Sam finished his and followed him.

The yard was still a mess but he'd left the 'pala down the lane a little, and after slopping through the mud, he and Sam got in, the double clunk of the doors and the sight of his brother stretching out his long legs in the well beneath the glove box tugging at him with familiarity.

"How's the research going?" he asked, turning the key and half-closing his eyes in gratitude at the deeply satisfying rumble of the engine.

"Slow," Sam said, leaning against the passenger door. "There's a ton of lore on the Watchers, but no facts. There's a lot of stuff that the Church might've buried, but we'll never see that now."

"Why?"

"Father Emilio says it's probably in the vaults under Vatican City," Sam explained. "Jerome thinks he can get Michel to contact the French hunters to go and look, but it'll take months."

"What about the other order chapters?" Dean frowned as he remembered the conversation about the tablets. "Uh … in Tibet?"

Sam sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Jerome lost contact with the Tibet chapter two days ago," he said. "The others said that they don't have anything like the tablets in their holds."

"Lost contact?"

"Well, it's Tibet, and apparently the place is in the middle of the mountains so it might just be a glitch but …" he trailed off.

"But maybe something else happened," Dean finished unwillingly. "Can they send someone to go look?"

"They're talking about it," Sam told him. "The Australian chapter is the closest. And it's five thousand miles from them."

Dean rubbed a hand reflexively over the prickle on his jaw. "So, best case, months."

"Yeah, best case," Sam agreed. "About half that distance is through the seas between the top of Australia and the mainland Chinese coast. No one has any idea of what survived there but it was never a safe place to travel through, so worst case, it could be a really long time."

Dean glanced sideways at him. "What about flying?"

Sam's brow creased up. "Travis, Marsh and Ernie are still at Tawas," he said slowly. "They can fly anything we could find – but not a lot of planes could've survived Baal. I wouldn't even know where to start looking."

Most of the airports hadn't been concerned about their aircraft being eaten, Dean thought. Even the planes that had been under cover, in the hangers, wouldn't have been safe from the swarms that had devoured everything not metal or stone or plastic. He let out a deep breath.

"Got a plan C or D?"

"Not even close," Sam said, with a shrug. "The distances are just too huge, Dean. And not even Michel has been able to find a satellite to hack into that can give us long-distance views. At least, not yet."

"Chuck's tame programmer – Mitch – anyone asked him?"

Sam shook his head. "He's good, but not that good. And not his field, apparently."

* * *

Grey concrete walls rose up alongside the road and Dean followed the curve around to the gates, stopping as the guard came down and checked their tolerance to salt, iron and silver. Liev had cast a devil's trap, perfectly drawn from the Key of Solomon, into the road between the two walls and the weapons of the guards didn't lower until the black car had driven over it without any ill effects.

"Dean!"

Both Winchesters turned to see Aaron running down the road from the keep toward them. Dean pulled over and stopped the car.

"We got a message from Rufus," the slender dark-haired man said as he leaned against the driver's door. "He's trapped in Amarillo, a vampire's nest."

Dean nodded, glancing at Sam. "You want to get a ride back with Aaron?"

Sam's expression hardened. "Hell, no, I'm coming with."

For a moment, Dean thought about arguing and Aaron gestured to the gate behind them.

"Bobby said to meet him and Ellen at the gates."

Repressing a desire to roll his eyes, Dean confined himself to a terse nod and started the car, heading for the western keep.

"You don't have to come, you know," he said, knowing he was wasting his breath. The silence from the passenger seat confirmed it.

"How long are you gonna be?" Sam asked, as they pulled around in front of the towering concrete and stone wall.

"Five minutes," Dean said, getting out of the car. "Your gear's still in the trunk."

"I know," Sam said.

* * *

_**West Keep, Lebanon**_

Dean looked over the equipment that was spread over the table. The herbs had been in the apothecary stores, dried and packed into small paper sachets, each labelled with their weight and uses. He added a small pot of creamy paste to the table, to mix with the ashes so that the scents would adhere to them. The thick, short blades gleamed menacingly against the wood. There was no mistaking their purpose, the hilts of sharkskin or cross-hatched wood, to prevent a damp palm from slipping at a critical moment. He checked everything as he loaded the gear into two heavy black canvas bags.

Slinging them over his shoulder, he walked out of the small apartment and closed the door behind him, heading for the stairs.

When he reached the main hall, he stopped as he caught sight of the dark-haired girl who'd been helping Alex out with the organisation of the holds, heading for the offices.

"Maria, you seen Alex?"

"Not since this morning," she said, turning to look at him.

"Can you find her? I've got – I'll be out the front," he said, shifting the weight of the bags, the urgency of the situation pressing down on him as heavily as the load.

"I'll try." She nodded and turned down toward the offices.

Walking out through the massive doors, he went down the steps, unlocking the trunk of the car and throwing the bags in, thinking of the quickest route to Amarillo. Through Dodge, maybe. Most direct route anyway.

He turned as Maria hurried down the steps toward him, her expression apologetic. "Sorry, I couldn't find her."

Hesitating for a moment, he wondered what message he could leave that wouldn't sound ominous. He shook his head. "Okay, thanks. Can you, uh, let her know I'll be back in a few days?"

She nodded and he walked around to the driver's door, getting in and starting the engine again. A few days ought to cover it, he thought uneasily. It would take about six to seven hours to get down there, depending on how the roads had held up.

* * *

Bobby's newly acquired pickup was waiting just outside the gate when he crossed the devil's trap again, a big SUV behind him. He pulled up alongside him.

"Dodge?"

Dean nodded. "Who've you got back there?"

"Peter and his trainees," Bobby said. "Adam, Zoe, Joseph and Danielle. You lead."

Dean put the car into gear and pulled out, increasing speed as they got clear of the smaller roads around the fortress. He should've let Riley know, he thought distractedly, then pushed it aside. They'd be back before the ground and everything else dried enough to worry about it.

* * *

_**Amarillo, Texas**_

Rufus looked around the small air-exchange room with a dissatisfied expression. There was only one way in or out, for anything bigger than a cat, but it was tight quarters, most of them would be forced into squeezing out of the way if it came to swinging machetes. It was a mess, he thought aggrievedly.

The whole damned thing had been a mess from go to whoa. The town had looked empty, as empty as all the others, the streets littered and strewn with automobile wrecks and broken buildings, the power lines lying like fat snakes across the roads where they'd fallen. Half the buildings had been torched, long before Baal had made his pass across the country, the scorch marks were still visible on the concrete and brick even after three years.

There hadn't been a single intact store they'd been able to find holding anything of use to take home, and after four days of searching, he'd set them up on the western side of town in a small church, heavily warded against demons and ghosts, thinking they'd have a good solid eight and head out the next day. In the middle of the night, the vamps had come and they'd spent four hours hand-to-hand fighting through neighbourhoods they didn't know, in the dark, being driven north and finally into the mall. And of course, the mall was also the nest, although he hadn't figured that out until yesterday.

And now … now they were stuck in a six by eight ventilation junction in the centre of the biggest nest of vampires he'd seen – scratch that, ever even heard of – their vehicles out of reach, no food and no way out. A mess.

The recce that had nearly gotten him killed yesterday had at least let him get word out to Bobby and he was hoping like hell that the cavalry was on its way. Mel was clawed up and the trainees were living on their nerves, although all of them had been good, had kept themselves together in the fighting and were looking after each other. Christine sat with her back to the wall, Mel's head cushioned on her lap, talking softly to him. Lee and Jack were leaning against the other side, watching the opening steadily.

"Alright, watches," he said, looking at Lee and Jack. "You two take first. Christine and I'll take the next. You see anything, chop its fucking head off."

"Got it," Jack said, shifting to the side of the single access hatch. Lee nodded and moved to the other side.

"Get some sleep," Rufus said quietly to Christine. He looked at Mel's face, paper-white and beaded with sweat in the cool room and swore inwardly.

"Talk to me," he said to the other man, crouching down beside him.

"Might've nicked something inside, boss," Mel said hoarsely. "Not feelin' too good now."

Christine lifted her gaze to meet Rufus', her mouth thinning out. Rufus looked back at his partner, gently lifting his hand aside from the blood-soaked jacket and peeling the shredded cloth back. Even through the man's shirt he could see the streaks of red that were beginning to edge out from the wounds. Medic kits were in the cars. Naturally. He eased the jacket back and Mel pressed his hand over his chest again.

"Get some sleep, Mel. Rescue team's on its way."

"Hope they bring some damned good drugs," Mel whispered, his eyes closing as another tremor shook through him.

Rufus' smile didn't quite make his eyes as he settled himself back against the wall, his machete close by his hand. He was hoping Dean would bring everything.

* * *

_**TX 70, Texas**_

"What'd Rufus say, exactly?" Sam asked, the CB mike in his hand.

"Amarillo," Ellen replied. "Said Route 40 and west. He said something about a nest and being trapped. Mean anything to you?"

"There's a Westgate Mall on Route 40, where it goes out of town to Highway 66," Zoe's voice came through as Sam was thinking. He glanced at Dean, one eyebrow lifted.

"You from Amarillo, Zoe?" Sam clicked the button on the mike.

"Yeah, I was heading east when I got picked up and taken to Austin," she replied.

"A mall would be a good location to hunt people," Sam speculated.

"We'll start there," Dean agreed, his foot going down a little harder. They'd had to make a wide detour around Dodge, and pick their way through some of the roads around the borders of the states – two had been impassable, graveyards of bumper to bumper cars lined up along all four lanes – but he was still fairly confident they'd make Amarillo before nightfall.

"Think the nest is in the mall?" Sam asked.

"I think that's the only reason Rufus would've gotten pinned down," Dean said thoughtfully.

"Sam, you still on?" Ellen said, her voice crackling a little.

"Yeah, Ellen," Sam picked up the mike again.

"Rufus said something about Mel – we didn't catch it, but it didn't sound good," she said. "I saw Merrin, brought everything I could think of."

"Alright, we'll start with the mall," Sam said slowly. "We'll take point, Dean, me, Adam and Joseph. Bobby, Danielle and Zoe got the rear. Ellen, you and Peter'll have to get them out when we find them."

There was a silence for a few moments and Dean grimaced, imagining the conversation in the car behind them.

"Right, we'll go with that," Ellen came back, her voice tense. "See you in there. Out."

"Out."

Sam put the mike back and slid a glance at his brother. "Think that was Bobby?"

"Yeah, pretty sure," Dean said disparagingly. "First time out, can't wait to get himself killed."

"Sounds like Ellen won the round," Sam offered hopefully.

Dean snorted. "Bobby's driving," he said. "Wait til we get there."

"You want to take Adam or Joseph?"

Dean licked his lips then shrugged. "Doesn't matter. We're going in fast and hard. Ellen brought dead man's blood, she and Peter can carry that in the projectors. Hopefully, the bloodsuckers'll still be sleeping soundly."

"Hopefully," Sam echoed softly.

* * *

_**Amarillo, Texas**_

Dean pulled into the huge parking lot from the frontage road, driving around the side of the V-shaped building as he and Sam looked for the loading docks. They found them on the southern side of the building, Dean slowing as he looked along the featureless brick walls.

"That'll do us," he said, pulling into drive through running past the smaller docks further west and stopping in front of the big white roller doors.

Behind the black car, Bobby stopped his pickup and Joseph parked the SUV.

Gear bags were pulled from the vehicles and weapons checked. Sam mixed the ashes of skunk cabbage, trillium and saffron into a tub of lanolin and daubed the mixture over his skin, passing the scent disguise on to his brother as he buckled the sheath holding a twenty-two inch machete around his hips. The ash mixture was strong, strong enough to hide their scents from the creatures whose senses were several times more refined than their own. Zoe's nose wrinkled up as she smeared it over her skin, her eyes watering as the odours filled her nose.

"Alright," Dean looked up at the sky. "Got about two hours of real daylight left. Joseph, you're with Sam, you take right flank. Adam, you and me'll be left. Peter and Ellen, behind us. Bobby, Danielle and Zoe, you're rear but if Peter and Ellen need help that's you, Danielle, right?"

The tall girl nodded, fingers tightening around the hilt of her knife.

"Pretty sure this is a nest and we don't know how big it is, but if they got Mel and Rufus pinned down, we're going to assume it's a big one. That means we stay together. No matter what. You watch your back and your partner's and you concentrate every fucking second," he paused and looked around them. "Vampires are silent and they're fast. The older ones are so fast you won't see them straight on. You use all your senses and you stay on high alert the whole time. To kill them, you take the head. And it's better to do it with one swing."

He looked around them, seeing the tension in their faces. Even Ellen and Bobby looked unhappy, he thought. Unsurprising. Neither had been in action for awhile and this was a helluva reintroduction.

"We go in as quietly as we can," he continued. "They'll probably hear us, can't help that, but if they are still sleeping, we might be able to get by." He looked at Sam. "As soon as we've got them, you take them, Ellen and these kids and head home. Peter, Bobby and me'll burn the place down and pick off the rest as they come out."

Sam looked at him mulishly. It was the first he'd heard of that end of the plan, yet Dean must've been thinking about it on the drive. He knew better than to argue about it in front of the others and his face darkened as he realised how neatly his brother had trapped him.

"Where do we start?" Peter asked, looking at Dean.

"If they got surrounded in there, Rufus would've picked somewhere defensible to hole up. Somewhere small, maybe, with a just a single way in and out. I'm thinking the ventilation system, somewhere in the building. The rest of the place, the stores … they'll be too open."

Peter nodded. "Makes sense."

"We got no way of pulling the schematics on this place, but most of the Westgate malls followed the rough same layouts – bathrooms, offices, docks and store-rooms, usually in the same areas," Bobby added, gesturing vaguely at the building beside them. "The aircon towers and central ventilation system is over this roof."

"Start there," Dean said, turning for the postern door that was set into the wall beside the big rollers.

* * *

There was no power on in the town and the emergency generators for the mall had long since died. Light filtered in through the filthy skylights and atrium, murky and dim and filling the long, wide corridors and open areas with shadows. The store they moved through had once been Sears. Now it was empty, the metal and plastic shelving twisted and fallen, creating a hazard to move through, everything else either gone or smashed to pieces. Their boots crunched over the fine debris that littered the floor, no matter how carefully they placed their feet.

A fucking maze, Dean thought, looking around uneasily. Corridors and dead-ends and alcoves and display corners were everywhere and there was no clear line of sight at all. He gestured to Adam to close up a little with Sam and Joseph as the space narrowed toward yet another corridor, shifting his grip on the heavy thirty-inch blade in his hand.

A movement in the corner of his eye snapped his head around and he saw his brother, machete gesturing to the locked steel door in the corridor just ahead. Nodding, he moved forward, flicking a sideways glance to make sure Adam was following and pulling the set of picks from his jacket pocket. The lock was a simple Yale and gave in thirty seconds but he was acutely aware of the sound of the pins as he forced them, and the click as the tenon withdrew.

The doorway opened outwardly, the hall beyond was completely black. Dean shoved the picks back into his pocket, fingers feeling for the round barrel of his flashlight at the same time, dragging it out and flicking it on.

In the split second he registered the white faces in front of him, his mind threw an image at him, from a film seen a long time ago, white faces against the darkness and he staggered back, the overlapping images acting on his instincts.

"Back!"

The vampires seethed out of the blackness of the hall, and all thought disappeared in the automatic responses, trained into muscle and nerve, drop, swing, cut, back and swing again. The first three vamps lost their heads to the machetes of the Winchester brothers in the first few seconds, but the weight of numbers pushed them back into the wider hallway, where the targets spread out.

They made a hissing sound, Adam realised remotely, his blade lifting and slicing off the hand as it reached for him without any volition, twisting aside as the hiss became a shriek of outrage. Falling backward, he lifted his machete in front of him defensively when his vision was filled with dead white skin, vivid, burning eyes and a bristling mouthful of fangs. There was a metallic singing and the head disappeared, hitting the wall opposite with a deep thud. Adam caught a glimpse of Dean turning away as he rolled back onto his feet, no time for thanks or even acknowledgement as the next monster sprang toward him.

Bobby winced as his foot slid out on the blood-slicked floor, twisting his knee savagely. He could feel the weight of the blade as it whistled through the air, not remembering feeling that before, back when he'd been three years younger and twice as fit. The edge bit into the side of the neck and he yanked it free when he realised he didn't have enough of his weight behind the blow, shifting back and getting his balance again as the creature swung around and came for him out of the shadows.

"Come on," Peter said in a low voice to Ellen, gripping her shoulder and dragging her toward the open blackness of the door. She nodded, shifting the weight of the medical pack on her back and ducking as a vampire leapt over her, impaling itself on Peter's thick blade, flung off as he spun around and strode after it, taking the head with a single, powerful sweep.

The corridor was filled with muted noise, the sing and whistle of the metal through the air, the hissing and snarling of the vampires still on their feet, the rasp of breath drawn hard in and out and the oddly muffled thuds when the long knives met dead flesh and sliced through and the heads fell and bounced along the floor.

Danielle pivoted in place, the cut back-and-single-handed, jarring on the bones of the spine without her weight behind it. She fell to her knees as the vampire dropped onto her, pulling out a second, slimmer knife without hesitation and plunging it into the creature's eye, freeing her machete as it reared back screaming and cutting the scream off with a fluid sweep that was backed up by her hundred and ten pounds of muscle and bone.

She looked across at Zoe, seeing the slim olive-skinned girl decapitate the monster in front of her with a shrill shriek of rage, and turned away, following Peter and Ellen into the darkness.

* * *

"Rufus!" Ellen shouted, the sound echoing furiously in the narrow, metal-lined corridor and making both her and Peter flinch at the noise.

"Yeah!"

They both heard the shout, distant but clear and Peter flashed his light down the corridor, seeing the turning ahead.

In the ventilation room, Rufus crouched beside the access panel, the small, battery-operated screwdriver whining as he freed the screws holding it in place and pulled it free.

"Dammit, Ellen, that you?" he said, crawling out as the light flashed around the corner and he saw Peter's big frame shadowy behind the beam, and Ellen's smaller one behind him.

Turning back into the room, he gestured to the opening. "Jack, Lee, Christine, get out and tell Peter I'm bringing out Mel."

The three trainees nodded and eeled out of the small opening, Jack twisting to get his shoulders through. Rufus refused to look at Mel's face, slipping an arm under his shoulders and pulling him toward the opening, stopping by the edge and peering out.

"Peter, you ready? He's pretty much a dead weight," he warned the Roman hunter, easing Mel through. He felt the weight taken on the other side, and heard Ellen's sharp wordless exclamation, then Mel was out and he could follow.

The corridor was lit by flashlights. "Christine, Jack, Lee, take point." Rufus instructed them as Ellen felt for Mel's pulse, her face tense in the reflected light. "Danielle, you and Ellen behind us. Peter, he's a heavy sonofabitch, take both us to get him out of here without making those wounds worse."

Peter nodded, looking at Ellen.

"Give me a second, Rufus," she said tightly, pulling a hypodermic from the satchel at her side. "He's running a raging fever. The ampicillin'll take it down; give him a better shot if we're dragging him through a running fight."

"Make it fast," he said, looking back at Peter. "Dean and Bobby buying us time out there?"

"Yeah, how big is this nest?" Peter looked up at him as Ellen finished the injection and tucked the empty syringe back in the pack.

"More than sixty," Rufus said, crouching by Mel's legs.

"Sixty?" Ellen froze at the words. "But – we only saw a dozen, outside, at most –"

"You think I'd get stuck for a dozen?" Rufus said, shaking his head as Peter took Mel's shoulders and they both lifted.

"That means –"

"Yeah, come on," Peter cut her off, forcing her to move as he started walking.

* * *

Dean turned, a second before the corridor filled, an instinct honed so sharply that he wasn't aware of the intention until his machete was swinging. The ceiling panels dropped to either side of him and the fangs fell onto the hunters, not a few but dozens. He caught a glimpse of Rufus and Peter, staggering out of the black doorway with someone between them, the gleam and thud of the knives of the people surrounding them as they pressed along the wall of the corridor, and he turned away, hacking at the horde of the undead, a remote recognition at the back of his mind that he needed to buy more time, needed to give them more time to get out and away.

Sam pulled the second blade from its sheath at the back of his hip as the narrow space seemed to fill with vampires, no longer aiming but swinging in short, deadly arcs, feeling the bite of the edge and the spray of cold blood as he cut his way across to Ellen and Peter and Rufus, trying to make a hole big enough for them to get through. He was dimly aware of his brother, behind him, the characteristic silence with which Dean fought underlaid by the occasional grunt as he took a blow or aimed one. He caught a glimpse of Bobby, swinging wildly, the old man's face slick with sweat, scratches painted a vivid red across one cheek, his breathing thickening.

"Bobby, stay with Ellen and Peter," he shouted, dropping to the floor and swinging his leg out wide, bringing down three vampires and rolling to his knees to take the heads as they flickered up past him.

"Worry about yerself!" Bobby grunted before he was thrown across the width of the corridor into the wall, his breath disappearing as he slid down to the floor. Sam lurched to his feet, slowing as a flick of blonde hair darted in front of the old man and Christine sliced at the back of the knees of the vampire, taking off the head as it toppled to the floor.

"Get him out of here!" Sam yelled, and twisted aside as he sensed the weight behind him, feeling the talons rake across his neck, drawing blood but going no deeper. He turned back to Dean and Adam and his eyes widened in horror.

The corridor beyond his brother was nothing but white faces and the bloodied gleam of long fangs. Sam's foot slid out from under him as he tried to move forward, seeing the arms reaching out for Dean, two vampires pinning the machete against his side, another four leaping to bring him down.

"Adam! Move!" he heard his own voice booming out of his throat as he caught a glimpse of Dean's face. "Don't let them take him!"

"Adam!" Dean's voice was muffled by the pack surrounding him.

Adam stood frozen, the machete in his hand raised but unmoving, blood dripping from the edge and tip and crawling down his hand and wrist. Stumbling forward, Sam slammed into him, knocking him sideways into the wall as the vampires closed around Dean and vanished into the blackness of the ventilation doorway.

"No!" He hacked at the remaining fangs, clearing a path to the doorway and racing down the short hall. At the turning, he looked toward the small ventilation room, the panel tossed to one side. In the other direction a grate was slightly askew on the floor, and he realised that the vamp's weren't using the mall itself for the nest, but the network of tunnels and subterranean passages underneath it. He felt a hand close around his arm and swung abruptly toward it, machete raised.

"Take it easy, it's me," Peter said, looking past him to the grate. "They went down?"

Sam nodded frantically. "You should go, take the others to safety."

"Bobby and Ellen will get them back to Kansas," Peter said tersely. "Jack and Rufus elected to stay."

Sam looked past the tall Roman hunter to the two silent men behind him. "What about the rest?"

"The trainees will go with them, it's enough of a guard to keep them from getting into too much trouble," Rufus said. "We going or what?"

"How many, Rufus?" Sam ground out, looking at the older man.

"There were at least sixty, when they drove us from where we were camping to here," Rufus said steadily. "There might be more. There might not."

"Why would they take Dean?" Jack asked, looking from Sam to Peter.

"No idea," Sam said, the muscle jumping at the point of his jaw. "Come on."

* * *

Dean struggled against the hands holding him, knowing it was futile, knowing he was only wasting his energy. There were at least ten surrounding him, and they weren't newly made, they were strong and hard to see and he thought he was in very deep trouble this time.

It'd come as a surprise when they'd pitched him headfirst down through the grate in the floor, though maybe, he thought, it shouldn't have. The mall, even powerless and dim, wasn't dark enough for vampires to rest without fear. The newness of the building had made it easy to forget about the underground possibilities, that kind of foresight was more obvious when you were dealing with the older cities, New York or Boston, Chicago even, with their miles of tunnels and sewer lines and subways. The tunnel was pitch black. His eyes were open and he couldn't see the vamps carrying him, let alone any details of where they were or where they were going. Was going to make getting back out an interesting exercise.

He felt the air movement first, sending a miasma of thick vampire scent over him, rotten flowers and decomposing meat and the sweetish-sour coppery tang of blood. He opened his eyes wider, choosing not to recognise that the level of light hadn't improved, his other senses were taking up the slack, telling him he was a wide space, an open space, and there were a lot of vampires surrounding him, a helluva lot. He could hear them, the rustle of the fabric of their clothes, could feel the avarice of their eyes on him.

"One human?" the sepulchral whisper came from his right as he was dropped to the ground, steel-like hands holding him down. A woman's voice, maybe.

"Not to feed," another voice, thickly accented, was to his left. Older, he thought, or stronger.

"We are starving, Raoul!" the first voice shrilled, getting closer. "There have been no fresh feeds in weeks!"

"And you would drink this one dry and have nothing else forever?" Raoul replied coldly. Dean felt a shiver slip through him at the prosaic tone. "There are people out there, these, this one, proves it. He will lead us back to them and we will fill ourselves with them."

"Why would a human do that?" a third voice said threadily, much closer. He could hear panting and felt the touch of the harsh breath against his temple.

"Because he won't be human. He will be one of us," Raoul said, his voice warming and dropping. Dean twisted his head aside as he felt a hand slip down the side of his face, the fingers icy cold. "So warm, so full of life. But a short life, human, just a short, sweet life that is over too quickly. With us, you can live forever."

"Pass," Dean snapped, locking his teeth together as he heard the whine of metal drawn from leather.

"That is not an option," Raoul said with a throaty chuckle.

Something cold dripped onto his face and Dean shut his eyes tightly, closing his lips at the same time, backing his tongue into his throat. The dripping became faster, became a drizzle, then a trickle and steely fingers dug into the muscles of his jaw, the inexorable pressure forcing his mouth open. The liquid filled his mouth quickly, coating his tongue, lapping around his teeth, spilling out along the corner.

"Seal his nose," Raoul snapped and he felt fingers close the only other airway he had. His lungs ached … and then burned … and he felt his awareness dissolving, dissipating as the oxygen was used up and no more was available to replenish it. A fist hit him in the diaphragm and he gasped, the last of his air forced out and reflex, the automatic reflex of the body, betrayed him as he sucked fresh air in, and with it, the blood that flowed from the vampire beside him.

"Better."

Coughing and trying to spit out the liquid that was spilling over his lips and chin, Dean twisted against the hands that held him rigidly, feeling the blood trickling down his throat, into his stomach, into his blood, changing him.

The blackness began to lighten and his eyes rolled back as a murmuring, not heard but felt, in the spaces of his skull, in the blood that pumped slower and slower through his veins, resolving into a voice. Into words. Into a message.


	3. Chapter 3 A Minute Seems Like a Lifetime

**Chapter 3 A Minute Seems Like a Lifetime**

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Lebanon**_

Jerome grimaced as he tried to adjust the signal coming in fits and starts from Ellen. "Ellen, I'm not receiving you, say again," he said.

"Vampire … lore on … cure, Jerome, find … cure!" Ellen's voice faded out as it got higher and he left the set on, the mike on the desk.

"Aaron! Oliver!"

The two associates ran through the library at the bellowed summons, slowing on the stairs that led down to the situation room.

"We need to find anything at all on a cure for vampirism," Jerome snapped at them.

Aaron looked at him doubtfully but Oliver swung around and raced for the hall and the stairs.

"I've never heard of one, Professor Ackers," Aaron said, looking across the direction after Oliver. "Not that we've been all through the books yet, by any means –"

"Aaron, I didn't ask if you'd heard of a cure," Jerome said through his teeth as he spun his chair around. "I told you to look for one. Tell Chuck and Mitch to look through what they've digitalised so far, then hit the stacks – and read fast!"

He turned away as Aaron blinked at him, pushing himself to the computer monitors and typing in the access code for the uplink to the other chapters. If there was such a thing, one of the holds would have it, he told himself. He hadn't caught all of the words that Ellen had tried to tell him, but he was pretty sure that he'd heard Dean's name in the few that he had understood.

* * *

_**TX 70 N, Texas**_

"You get through?" Bobby asked her as she slammed the mike back on the hook in frustration.

"I don't know," Ellen said, glancing back into the back seat at Mel worriedly. "I think so, enough. I hope so."

"You think they took him to turn him?"

She shook her head, turning away from him to look out the window. "I can't imagine why, but yeah, I think they did."

"Where do you want to stop to patch up Mel?" Bobby glanced in the rearview mirror at the big man lying in the back.

"Take us at least a hundred miles from that place, Bobby," Ellen said tiredly. "At least a hundred."

* * *

Behind them, driving the SUV, Joseph's fingers were white around the steering wheel, the silence in the car an audible indication that his tension was shared by the others.

In the rear, Adam stared out the window, aware that Danielle was sitting as far from him as she could, crowding Zoe on the other side. In the front seat, Lee, Christine and Joseph looked rigidly through the windshield.

He didn't know what had happened. He'd turned around, hearing his half-brother's yell of surprise and had seen a wall of them, fangs and shining eyes and dead faces and he'd just been … unable … to move. Unable to do anything as they'd closed around Dean and dragged him away. Unable to speak or swing or blink or breathe. Sam had knocked him into the wall and the … shock … or whatever it had been had gone, but by then it had been far too late.

He could feel their mute accusations, filling the car, filling his head. He'd left his brother to die, to be turned by the monsters without raising a finger to help. He wanted to scream at them, to explain, to justify or rationalise what had happened somehow but he couldn't. Even if he could, it wouldn't help. Wouldn't bring Dean back.

The guns … the training … Rufus and his endless criticisms and sarcastic comments … even the skinwalker pack and Dean killing Isaac … none of it had hit him the way that wall of monsters in the dark had. None of them had been … quite real … not in the way he'd seen death stalking him in the glittering eyes lit up by the flashlights. Was he a coward? Or had he been kidding himself this whole time? Believing that he knew better, knew more than the men and women he'd been living with these last few months. Knew more than his father had, believing that John could've done more, could've made the effort to spend more time with them …

… but at the risk of leading things like that back to them, he recognised slowly. They had been targeted by monsters, years and years after John had disappeared and never come back. Ghouls. Wanting revenge. Dean had reluctantly told him that the ghouls had found him and his mother easily because they'd never left Windom. It was the one thing he allowed that John had slipped up on, not making them move after he'd killed the monster. But how could he have known that, Adam thought helplessly. How could anyone predict what a monster would or wouldn't do?

Sam's look of disbelief and fury flickered through his thoughts again and he felt the hot rush of shame and guilt filling him, burning through everything he'd thought, had believed in. He'd been wrong. Dead wrong. But it wasn't him who had to pay the price for that.

* * *

_**Amarillo, Texas**_

In the turgid darkness of his mind, Dean saw and heard.

_An ancient time. A woman, dark-skinned, with long, black hair and cold, black eyes and a full, round belly, distended in pregnancy, the skin rippling with the movement of the things she carried. Darkness and the fear in the eyes of a man who sat by a flickering camp-fire. Pale, hard skin and blood-red eyes. A spiralling wind, rising up from a wide plain, carrying thousands of children, their arms spread wide, their skin smooth and marble-cold, their eyes glowing vivid in their still faces, blood dripping from every small mouth. A black cloud that covered the land in shadow. A face … smooth and untouched by years of time, aeons of time, pale, bright eyes and a slow, satisfied smile that revealed a single point between the thick, carnelian lips …_

He woke abruptly, a distant plink-plink noise sounding like a church bell in his head, too loud, too close. His eyes opened and he realised that he could see, the world stark and flat and two-dimensional in shades of grey and black but visible again. It occurred to him slowly that no one had brought a light into the room. His vision had changed. Was changing. He was changing.

The thought caught him by the throat and wouldn't let go. Behind it, there was a waiting ocean of might-have-beens and could-haves, of sorrow and pain. He rolled to his feet, pushing that ocean aside. He would look at that after … if there was an after.

He stepped forward and stopped, feeling the changes in his body already. Without having to test it, he knew he was stronger. A lot stronger. And faster. He turned his head, identifying the maddening plink-plink noise that was so difficult to shut out. In the tunnel, forty yards away, a pipe was leaking, the droplets falling to the shallow pool on the floor. He listened, deliberately now, and heard. Footsteps, four men, not vampires, moving this way from the tunnel he'd come in through. Sam, he thought. And Peter. He recognised the characteristic tread of Rufus, missing three toes from his left foot and dragging the ball of that foot a little due to it. He didn't recognise the fourth man. Possibly one of the juniors, he thought absently.

Turning, he walked away from them, moving deeper into the labyrinth of tunnels and junctions under the mall. He had work to do here first. Then he would find them, easily, following the sounds of their hearts and the smell of their blood if he had to. He would find them and tell Sam to do what he had to, to put an end to it.

He could hear the muted whispers of the vampires, moving through the tunnels, hunting rats and mice and anything that lived down here that had blood in its veins. He identified the middens of the dead by the faint smell on the damp, cool air. Dried and desiccated corpses that been drained of every last drop. A group of survivors, maybe. Wandering into the wrong place at the wrong time. He noticed that the thought brought no emotion, one way or the other, and his brows drew together a little.

They'd taken his coat, with the flashlight and the Colt but had left the machete and his fingers curled tightly around it, the rough hilt pressing against the palm. He was pretty sure his heart was no longer beating but blood surged through his veins, sparkling with energy, with strength, with a vampire's blood. He slowed a little as the name eluded him for a long moment.

_Raoul_.

Raoul's blood. Raoul would be spilling a lot more today.

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Lebanon**_

Jerome's brows shot up as he read the replies to his requests from both France and Australia. He shoved the chair back from the desk, swinging it around and driving it at full speed to the ramp that led up to the library. He reached the top with the momentum as Oliver shot into the room from the other end.

"We should have it here – a Campbell invention – check the –" he yelled at the young man.

"I've got it!" Oliver cut him off, waving a tattered, leather-bound book in his hand and striding over to the table.

"How the hell – let me see," Jerome leaned forward as Oliver put the book in front of him, flipping open to the page.

"It was in the Poisons section, that's why I didn't remember it straight away," he said, leaning over the book. "It was tried in 1617 and some modifications were made after the first victims died. The Campbells brought the successful recipe with them to the United States in 1620."

Jerome nodded. "What about after, did anyone else die of it?"

"No, but they found that the recipe could only succeed if the victim had not ingested human blood. Once the new vampire drinks, there is no turning back." He put a second book on the table, this one entitled _Supernatural Disease and Infection_.

"The exact nature of the transference of the powers and the seeming death of the vampire hasn't been precisely studied, but in this section," he continued, running a nail along the edge of the pages and opening the pages to the chapter. "Here, the infection or mutation is passed through blood contact. The vampire's blood, when ingested _only_, produces the same effects in the recipient's body as in the original subject. The heart stops pumping, petrification of the body's cells begins, locking the body into the exact moment of their transformation, respiration is still functional but body temperature drops to ambient levels in six hours and then does not rise unless blood is taken internally. It is the victim's blood that provides colour and the feeling of warmth to a vampire, showing whether or not it has fed in the previous twenty four hours. After twenty four hours, the effects diminish until the body is once again cold, and the skin cold and pale and hard."

"Christ!" Jerome said, pushing himself away from the table and down the ramp again.

"What's wrong?" Oliver asked, hurrying down after him.

"We've got everything that cure needs, except the blood of the vampire that turned him," Jerome rattled out, picking up the mike of the SSB. "And they won't know to get it, they don't know there's a cure."

"CQ, CQ. Calling CQ and standing by," he snapped into the mike. "Come on, Ellen, be listening, goddammit. CQ, CQ. Calling CQ. This is Kilo-Lima-Lima-Hotel-Zero-Niner, calling CQ and standing by."

"_Roger, Kilo-Lima-Lima-Hotel-Zero-Niner. This is Echo-Bravo-Mike-Zero-Five-Two, receiving you_," Ellen's voice sounded loud and clear from the speaker and Jerome closed his eyes in relief.

"Ellen, you have to go back," he said, "We've got a cure, repeat, got a cure for vampirism but it needs the blood of the vampire that initiated the fledgling, over."

"_God, Jerome, you're kidding me, aren't you?_"

He could hear the frustration and exasperation in her voice clearly. "Negative, Ellen. Not kidding you. You can't let them just kill all the vamps and Dean – he has to be brought back – and someone has to tell them that he can be turned back if he doesn't feed."

"_Lemme get this straight_," Bobby came on, his voice tense and scratchy. "_We can save Dean. But he needs the blood of the vamp that turned him? And if he feeds, it's all over._"

"Roger, yeah, that's correct, Bobby."

"_But you've got everything else we need, for certain?_"

"We do," Jerome promised, glancing at Oliver who nodded vehemently.

"_Alright, we're on it. Out._"

"Out."

He put the mike back and leaned back in the chair with a deep sigh, closing his eyes.

"Oliver."

"Yessir," Oliver said, straightening up.

"Get everything ready," Jerome told him, opening his eyes and turning to look at him. "Tell Frances to get down to the town and get Kim and Merrin … the whole lot – that cure has to be ready as soon as they get here and give us the blood."

"Yessir!"

Jerome watched him bound back up the stairs, sweeping up both books as he passed the table and heading back down the hall. Now, he only had to tell Alex, he thought uncomfortably.

* * *

_**TX 70 N, Kansas**_

The pickup and the SUV sat, one behind the other, on the shoulder of the highway as Bobby and Ellen argued.

"Dammit, Ellen," Bobby snapped, slamming his hand on the quarter panel in frustration. "I love you, I do, but you can't tell me what to do!"

"Bobby, you know –"

"No, I'm goin'," he said, turning away from her. "I ain't Jo, Ellen. You need to get Mel back to Lebanon. Christine, you, Adam, Zoe and Lee are riding shotgun in the SUV with Ellen and Mel. You stick together and you kill anything that gets in your way." He turned to the others. "Joe, you and Danielle come back with me, we gotta get back to Sam and Rufus before they find Dean."

He looked at Ellen as the trainees shifted to the different vehicles, Joseph and Adam lifting Mel out of the dual cab pickup and carrying him carefully to the SUV.

"Get him to Dr Kim and do it fast as you can," he told her. "We're gonna be on your heels, even if we have to wrap Dean in chains and leave him in the trunk for the whole ride. I'll see you in Lebanon."

She scowled at him for a moment then strode over and hugged him tightly. "You bring him back. And don't you take any stupid risks, Bobby. I couldn't stand to lose you."

He kissed her hard and turned away, climbing into the pickup and starting the engine. Joseph and Danielle got in beside him, and they watched Ellen manoeuvre the SUV off the shoulder and back on the road, Bobby grunting in approval as he saw her put her foot down. He turned the truck around and bumped them over the meridian strip, putting the accelerator down to the floor. From here, it was a straight run back to Amarillo.

He could feel the curiosity of the two riding with him but he couldn't talk about the cure or Dean or how the hell they were going to find Sam in the maze of the mall and the tunnels at night when all the vampires would be out, prowling for food. He'd spent the last three hours feeling sick to his stomach with worry about the man he considered a son, keeping his fears under lock and key, and fanning the small flame of hope that there was a solution, an answer to save Dean. Now he that had one, he was on the clock to get back there and warn them in time. _God's sense of humour_, he thought sourly.

* * *

_**Amarillo, Texas**_

Peter walked along the narrow access tunnel, glancing sideways at the tall man striding beside him. Like most successful hunters, Andante had a vivid imagination, and he needed no prompts to imagine what Sam was feeling. Whether the vamps had taken his brother to feed or to turn, there was little likelihood of being able to save Dean now.

He'd seen the oldest Winchester in action, and he'd seen the respect and loyalty he'd pulled from the disparate ranks of the people he'd gathered together in Michigan. His death, one way or the other, would go hard with the people in Kansas, and those in the northern state. And he wasn't sure that Dean's brother would be able to take up the slack left by his loss.

Sam walked steadily through the tunnel, ignoring the occasional look he felt from Peter, ignoring the fear and thoughts that clamoured for attention in the back of his mind. He would find Dean and get him out, and that was the only thought he had room for now. _You'll have to kill him_. The knowledge seeped in past his control and he shuddered slightly, his step faltering. _A vampire, with Dean's skills, with his knowledge and strength?_

He shoved the thought aside. He would do it, at the last, if there was no other way. Until he reached that point, he would believe that he could save his brother.

They'd killed a few fangs already, attacking from the cross-tunnels and had left their bodies lying in the main conduit. Better than breadcrumbs for finding their back, he thought darkly. Down here, the vampires had all the advantages and it was more luck than skill that they'd gotten this far. He didn't know how he was going to be able to find Dean in the lightless labyrinth if his brother didn't want to be found.

At the next intersection, Sam looked up as Rufus stopped dead in front of him. Peering around the older man, he saw the body in the flashlight's beam, sprawled against one wall. The head was gone. He felt a spurt of hope. If Dean was hunting them, he couldn't be dead – and maybe he'd gotten free before he'd been turned.

Lengthening their strides, they moved faster through the darkness, flashlights flickering over the smooth concrete walls and floors. Drawing attention to themselves was unavoidable against creatures whose senses bettered their own in every respect. There was no point to pussyfooting around now.

Fifty yards deeper, at the next junction, they entered a small round chamber with four tunnels leading out from it and Sam stopped, letting his flashlight play across the floor.

There were more bodies. _Ten_, he counted feverishly, the heads lying where they'd fallen. _Ten_. All cleanly taken.

Joseph looked at the carnage, leaning past Peter. "Could he have –?"

Rufus answered, glancing at Sam. "No."

"So he's a vampire now?" Joseph asked uneasily.

"It seems to be that way," Peter said, clearing his throat. "Come on, if he's cleaning them out, he'll be easy to follow."

Sam nodded silently, stepping over the first body. Rufus and Peter were right, he thought distantly. A human hunter couldn't take on ten alone. Couldn't move fast enough. Wasn't strong enough. He stopped the thoughts there and followed Peter into the tunnel where a blood trail dripped along the floor.

* * *

Bobby stopped the pickup in front of the loading bay and swung out, going to the metal box in the back. Rufus had told Ellen that the there'd been at least sixty fangs inside the mall. They'd taken a lot down, getting Mel and the kids out, maybe twenty or more in the melee in the corridor. He could count on Sam and the others taking a few more. But they'd need something to hold the monsters off them, something to incapacitate them while they butchered the rest. He pulled out his gear bag, looking for the pack of flares that he knew was somewhere in there, smiling slightly in relief as his fingers curled around the distinctive round tubes.

Magnesium flares. They burned hot and white, unbearably brilliant. He rummaged a little more, pulling out the pairs of welding flash glasses that were essential to the flares' use. He had two pairs only. Looking around, he tossed one at Joseph.

"Once the flares go," he told Danielle and Lee. "You get back from wherever we are. They'll blind you as readily as they do the vampires. You'll be watching out for stragglers, got it?"

They nodded. Joseph settled the glasses on his forehead and picked up his machete, following Bobby into the Sears store.

The grate had been left off the access hole and dropping into the tunnel, Bobby could see where Sam and the others had passed easily enough, the splash of blood and the severed head on the floor leading the way.

"We gotta hurry," he said in a low voice. "We need that blood and we need to get to Dean before they do."

* * *

Dean stopped, crouching to wipe the edge of the machete on the body at his feet as he listened. Footsteps, a whispered voice, the scrape of a blade drawn free from the leather binding. Who the hell was joining the party, he wondered remotely? It didn't matter. Up ahead, not far, he could hear movement, the soft echoes in a much larger space. That would be the centre of the nest, he thought.

He wiped the back of his hand over his face, eyes screwing shut against the cramp of hunger that bit into him. The need was getting stronger. Pulling at him. Clawing at him. He thought of Famine's assertion, in Emporia, and his mouth stretched out in a cold, humourless grin. Well, he was hungry now, he thought, walking into the tunnel. He was fucking hungry now.

As a human, he'd known how to move without noise. As a vampire, he ghosted along the tunnel, not even the occasional rat noticed his passing. He stopped to one side of the tunnel when he saw the junction ahead, advancing incrementally along the wall to avoid the vampires' enhanced acuity of motion perception. In the encounter he'd just had, taking ten fangs down had been a dance using senses that were so much more powerful than he was used to it'd felt as if he'd known what they were going to do before they did it. There would be more than ten here, he thought, sliding down the wall to look into the area below eye level. He would have to be faster and smoother.

His gaze flickered across the room and he drew back slightly. Twenty two. One other tunnel leading into the junction from his nine o'clock and none near it. The precise layout of the area was in his mind, the location of each fang known, the distances between them, the probable evasions, offensive and defensive tactics they would use. His father had taught him, before he'd ever set foot in a classroom, that any offence had to be the result of strategy and character. Either would not result in victory. Only both could succeed. He'd seen that philosophy prove itself over and over in his life. The strategies of Heaven and Hell had failed because they had failed to recognise that simple fact, failed to recognise the character of those they manipulated. He drew in a deep breath and let it out, releasing at the same time the furious red hunger and the cold, black rage that he'd held back for the past two hours.

Raoul's gaze snapped up as the head flew past him, flicking around the room and seeing body after body falling, the attacker moving too fast for him to catch more than a streaking glimpse. He launched himself blindly at the fledgling he'd made, talons ripping through the thin shirt, skating through the skin and over the hard curves of the ribs as his aim missed the unprotected torso, the newly-made vampire turning faster than he'd thought possible and swaying to one side just far enough. He landed on his feet, and stumbled on the body there, ducking as the singing metal blade split the air above him and lunging for the man's hips.

Dean slammed the point of his elbow into the side of the vampire's head as he swung the blade, and it bit through the vamp's arm, soaking him to the shoulder in a gout of cold blood. Raoul dropped under the blow and rolled away fast, coming to his feet and shaking his head to clear the grey mist that was clouding his vision, the mostly severed arm hanging by his side, his blood pouring out, but not pumped.

"You think to redeem yourself with this slaughter?" he snarled at Dean, circling him, his feet sliding along the slippery floor to avoid tripping over the dead that were tangled in heaps around the room.

"No," Dean said shortly, swinging around to bury his machete in the abdomen of the vampire who'd crept behind him, reversing the turn to take its head as it stumbled back, shrieking in agony.

"No, I don't see myself lasting out this night," he continued, stalking the older vampire across the room, blood flying off the blade in a sweeping shower of droplets as he swung it up.

* * *

"No," Danielle said, freezing with her hand against the wall of the tunnel. "This way, Bobby!"

"How –"

"Listen!" She cocked her head at the head of the northern tunnel. Bobby held his breath, listening and nodded slowly.

"You two hang back a little," he said to her and Lee. "Jack, got the flare ready?"

Jack nodded, following Bobby down the tunnel at a run on the old man's heels. The flares had percussion detonators, he remembered, hearing Rufus' voice in his head. _Bang 'em hard on the floor, just once, and throw 'em_. He gripped in the flare in one hand, the blade in the other and followed the bouncing flashlight beam and the moving shadow through the twists and turns of the narrow passage.

* * *

Sam started running when he heard the noise – screams and snarls and guttural roars – all echoing insanely from an enclosed space somewhere up ahead. Beside him, he could hear the pounding of Peter's boots against the smooth concrete floor, from behind, the rasp of Rufus' breaths and footfalls of Joseph. No matter what, he told himself, he would not let Dean see anything in his face except his love, his loyalty. Like a mantra, or a prayer, the thought looped through his mind in time with his steps.

He burst through into a much larger space, his flashlight swinging wildly around, seeing blood and bodies everywhere. Then there was a double-whoompf and light exploded into the room, burning brilliantly and instantly bleeding every colour from the scene as the flare hit the centre.

Twisting away, he threw his arm over his eyes, feeling the spreading heat the flare was generating against his skin, hearing the screams of the fangs in there, unable to tell if one of those screams belonged to his brother.

* * *

Bobby and Jack strode into the room after the flares, flash glasses darkened to black. Dean was hunched over near the centre of the room and Bobby ran to him, dragging him away from the flare and thrusting him into the tunnel.

"Which one?" he yelled at him, hand gripping one shoulder tightly. "Which one turned you?"

Dean couldn't see, the light piercing even through his tightly closed eyelids and the arm he held in front of them. He heard the voice beside him, recognition slowly penetrating of who it was and shook his head. The damned flare was cooking him and he turned further away from it, dropping to his knees and hunching up against the wall.

Looking back into the room, Bobby could see one vamp still moving and still with its head. He had the feeling that Dean would've left the vampire who'd turned him to the last.

"The one still alive, Dean?"

Dean nodded as he fought against the sudden grip of blood-lust, his jaw clenched against the smell of the old hunter, against the sound of his blood, rushing through his veins, his heart, beating steadily in his chest. He pressed himself harder against the wall of the tunnel, feeling the fangs begin to descend as the hunger wrestled with his will for control.

"Jack!" Bobby turned from him and shouted to the trainee, pointing to the vamp kneeling and covering his face against the flare's burning brilliance. Jack nodded and they walked to either side, Bobby gripping the wide-mouthed screw-cap bottle in his pocket as Jack swung the machete and the vampire's head toppled onto the floor.

Bobby dropped beside the body, tipping it forward as he got the neck of the bottle under the cold flow of blood. He had no idea how much was needed, but he didn't want to hear he hadn't gotten enough when they got back to Kansas. He'd told Ellen they'd be pushing after her, and he'd meant it. In the brilliant light of the flares, he'd seen Dean flinch from him, muscles tightening as he'd turned away. He knew how strong Dean's will was, he didn't know how long the younger man would be able to control the need for blood.

* * *

The light began to dim finally, the flares burning against the bodies they'd fallen on, scorching and charring the fabric of the clothing. From the other tunnel, Sam slowly turned around, blinking rapidly at the sight in front of him, Bobby kneeling beside the dead vamp and catching its blood, Jack standing behind him, watching the corpses for any sign of movement.

"What the hell, Bobby?" he said, straightening up and stepping into the room.

Looking up, Bobby grinned through the dirt and blood and fine ash that coated his face.

"Jerome came through, Sam," he said, screwing on the cap tightly and getting to his feet. "They found a cure."

"What?" Sam stared at him as hope and disbelief warred in his heart.

Bobby shook his head, pushing the glasses up off his face as he turned to the tunnel.

"You didn't feed, Dean?" Bobby asked. Dean shook his head, unwilling to trust his voice, afraid it would be raw with the need that thundered up and down him.

"Good. Jerome said the cure's good but only if the fledgling hasn't fed."

"Bobby, you serious?" Sam hurried up behind him, Joseph, Peter and Rufus on his heels.

"No lie," Bobby told him. "But we gotta get moving. How many do you think are left?"

"I don't know," Sam said, looking for his brother. "We took out nearly twenty in the first attack, another four on our way through, and Dean killed fifteen, not counting what's here." He looked at the bodies on the floor, becoming less and less visible as the flare's light faded.

"Twenty-two," Dean confirmed, his voice deep and thick. "Here."

"We took out another five on the way in," Bobby said, glancing at Jack who nodded his confirmation.

"That's over sixty," Rufus said.

"We'll follow the original plan," Peter added. "Burn this place to the ground and see if anything comes out."

"We gotta get going," Bobby said again. "We won't have time to sit around and wait for stragglers."

"No," Sam agreed, glancing at Rufus and Peter. "You stay, with Joseph and Jack. Burn it out. Bobby and me and Danielle and Lee'll head back to Kansas."

"Sounds like a plan," Rufus said, looking down at Dean worriedly. He could see the deep, shuddering breaths shaking the man, Dean's hands curled tight into white-knuckled fists.

Sam walked to the tunnel mouth and gripped his brother's arm. "Come on, we can do this, we can fix it, Dean. You'll see."

Half-listening to the conversation going on behind him as he fought against the smells of blood that surrounded him, against the ravenous need that flooded through him, Dean looked up at him, his face expressionless but his eyes wide with a mixture of incredulity and hope.

"You sure about this, Bobby?" he asked, straightening slowly as Sam pulled him up, his control over the hunger paper-thin but there finally.

"Hundred percent," Bobby said. "Wouldn't be here if I wasn't. Go!"

The four hunters, four trainees and vampire moved in a tight group back up the tunnel.

* * *

They were too loud.

Their voices. Their blood, roaring through them. Their footsteps. The clang of their weapons. The beat of their hearts. The flashlight beams shining over the tunnel walls and floors and ceilings were too bright and Dean walked between Sam and Bobby with his head down, eyes slitted against the light. Instead of a heartbeat, the hunger pulsed in him in the same rhythm as his footsteps. Their smell. Their sweat. Their blood … all of it crowded into his brain and he staggered a little as he walked, fighting off the sudden and shocking urges to turn left or right, rip into the throats that were too close, too enticing, and drain the bodies of blood, stop the agony that filled him. It was like holding onto a vicious animal, trying to anticipate, to block the violent twitches.

As they came out into the mall's main floor, the sky was lightening and Dean lifted his arm again, covering his face.

"Dean," Sam said quietly beside him. He let his arm drop a little, looking under it through half-closed eyes at Sam.

"How do you feel?"

The snort came out automatically, a part of the real him. "Like I might simultaneously burst into flames and implode," he told his brother sourly. "Not good."

"I meant … is it bad yet?" Sam winced at his brother's description.

"It's been bad for hours, Sam." He rubbed a hand over his face restlessly. He could see, in his brother's eyes, how bad it looked, how bad he looked. He felt like hammered crap, and it wasn't going to improve over the seven or eight hour drive back to Kansas. He was turning into a monster and his instinctive reaction was to hide, to let no one see him. That wasn't going to be possible. And maybe it wouldn't matter if the cure didn't work. But whichever way it went, he didn't want Alex to see him like this, didn't want to see in her eyes what he could see in Sam's.

"Listen, when we get back to the keep, make sure that Alex doesn't see me, okay?"

"Why?" Sam looked at him, brow creasing. "She won't be –"

"I don't want this memory burned into her brain!" Dean snapped abruptly. "Just – humour me – alright?"

"Yeah, alright," Sam said, his gaze shifting slightly past him.

"Danielle," Bobby said quietly from behind them, and Dean turned to look around. The dart hit him in the side of his chest, just under the collarbone and he looked at the tall redhead. A second dart struck his shoulder, piercing the muscle through the cloth of his shirts. The dead man's blood flowed sluggishly into him and he swayed as he felt the confusion in his mind, his senses dulling, the extraordinary connection between body and brain dissolving and disappearing.

"Catch him," Peter said sharply, and Sam stepped forward, wrapping his arms around Dean's chest as his brother's knees buckled and he started to drop.

"Alright, we got him," Rufus said, taking his legs and lifting. Peter gripped one arm, pulling out the dart and tossing it back to Lee as Sam lifted the other arm over his head and pulled it around his shoulder.

"We'll take you back to your cars," Bobby said to Rufus, looking around the dim interior. "Then we'll go."

"This won't take long," Rufus said, following Sam and Peter out through the glassless doorframes.

Getting Dean's dead weight into the back seat of the dual cab pickup took a few minutes, and Danielle climbed in with him, pressing herself against the door as she unrolled the four-pack of syringes slotted into the small cloth pouch and lifted his head to her lap.

"Don't wait for him to wake up," Bobby warned her. She looked at him and nodded.

"I won't."

Sam got into the driver's seat and Lee settled himself in the middle as Bobby climbed in and shut the door. Peter, Rufus, Joseph and Jack climbed into the tray and Bobby pulled away from the building.

* * *

_**KS 23, Kansas**_

"How's he doing?" Sam looked in the rearview mirror at the girl in the back.

"Still out, breathing steadily," Danielle said, looking down at Dean.

Sam flicked a quick glance at Bobby. "I can't believe there's a cure. Why didn't we know about it?"

"Shit, Sam, there's a helluva lot of things we don't know about," Bobby said with a shrug. "Couldn't get through too easily on the radio, so we didn't hear much about it. Just that it needed the blood of the vamp that turned him, and if he'd fed, it wouldn't work."

Sam swallowed uncomfortably. He couldn't have killed Dean. Someone else would've had to. And he wouldn't've been able to live with that either. He understood, now, the burden their father had placed on his brother before he'd died. Understood, now, what Dean had meant when he'd said those words had been screaming in his head. Understood why his brother hadn't been able to take the gun or pull the trigger when Meg had been using him, possessing him, and trying to drive Dean into killing him.

Bobby looked across at him, seeing the tension in the set of his shoulders. "We'll get him back, son."

Sam nodded, his hands tightening on the wheel as he stared at the road rolling on ahead.

"Yeah."

* * *

_**Lebanon, Kansas**_

"No, he has to sit up to drink this," Merrin said, scowling at the men as they carried Dean into the small examination room. "Can't you restrain him, when he comes to?"

Sam looked at Bobby, who rolled his eyes. "Not really, not if the hunger is deep."

"I'll get the 'cuffs," Ellen said, as they manoeuvred Dean into the wide chair.

On the countertop, Oliver hovered by the ingredients of the cure. "Where's the blood?"

Bobby handed him the jar and he took it, unscrewing the cap and pouring half into a glass measuring jug.

"What's in it?" Bobby asked, his fear for Dean momentarily diverted by the need to know about the cure, to file away the information for the future, as he walked up behind him. Oliver tapped the book beside him without answering, concentrating on what he was doing. Bobby read the list of ingredients in the cure, brows rising.

_Hypericum perforatum, taurine (C__2__H__7__NO__3__S), Verbena officinalis, carnitine (C__7__H__15__NO__3__), Crataegus monogyna, silver nitrate (AgNO__3__), iron oxide (Fe__2__O__3__nH__2__O), Sorbus aucuparia, Allium sativum, Digitalis purpurea, Symphytum officinale. Blood of the infecting vampire._

"An' this works?" he asked Oliver, watching as he burned the twigs of hawthorn in a small metal dish.

"Yes, it's surprisingly scientific actually, considering it was developed in the early sixteen hundreds," Oliver said absently as he scooped the ash from the bowl and added it to the jug. "The originating vampire's blood is required to key the other ingredients to the correct cells that must be removed. The verbena and the hawthorn then act on the vampiric blood, neutralising it in the body at the same time as the silver breaks the connections to the mind – and that's an oddity, although silver is antibacterial and perhaps the mental effect of the disease is more related to that than a viral infection." He shrugged, tipping a small amount of a greenish liquid into the mix. "The taurine draws the blood back, along with the garlic, which although it has no real effect on a vampire, has an extraordinary pull on the creature's blood, drawing it out like a poison or, more to the point, like an infection."

He crushed the rowan berries and the finely chopped verbena leaves together and tipped the mix into the jug. "The rowan berries must be cooked, raw they are bitter and rather poisonous to our systems. But cooked the parasorbic acid is transformed to sorbic, which is a preservative. It acts in reverse on the petrification of the body cells affected by the vampire blood, returning them to living cells and undoing the effects. Not sure why, but an analysis of the actual viral properties of the disease might explain that."

Bobby looked at the mixture in the jug, already turned from red to a greyish-black. He leaned over it and sniffed cautiously, drawing back sharply at the acrid, pungent scent.

"Doesn't smell too good," Oliver agreed, flicking a glance at him. "Probably tastes worse." He scraped the small pile of fine red powder from the board into it. "The iron strengthens the victim's blood during the drawing process, separating the cells from the vampire's, and the digitalis, carnitine and comfrey are present to start the heart beating again, prevent arrhythmia and strengthen the body."

"Huh."

Oliver glanced at him and smiled dryly. "The Campbells experimented with this in 1617 or before, Bobby. It's an amazing use of what they had available at the time."

Ellen came in and passed two pairs of handcuffs to Sam, taking the first of the pair she still held and locking it around Dean's left wrist and the arm of the chair, crouching to lock his left ankle to the chair leg.

She got to her feet as Sam finished with Dean's right ankle and looked at Merrin. "Will we have any warning when he starts to come to?"

The nurse walked over to the chair, resting her fingertips against his forehead. "He's burning up," she said, glancing at Dr Sui. "He was cooler ten minutes ago."

"The virus is still working its way through him," Kim said worriedly. "I don't think we have any way to tell if he's awake or not, aside from observation. I haven't set up the new EEG yet."

Ellen nodded, turning to Oliver. "Is that ready?"

"Almost," Oliver said shortly. He picked up a small bottle of clear liquid and an eye-dropper, filling the dropper and adding six drops to the cure.

"Does he have to drink all of that?" Bobby stared at the jug. It contained almost two pints of fluid.

Oliver picked up the small stick blender and put it into the jug, pulsing the mixture until he was sure that all the ingredients were completely combined. "Yes. The measurements are precise. If he's not capable of controlling himself, we'll have to insert a stomach tube."

"What happens after he's taken it?" Ellen looked at him and back at the unconscious man in the chair.

"The book doesn't specify that," Oliver admitted. "The whole thing is designed to draw out the blood from his body, reversing the way it infiltrated, so I'm guessing regurgitation."

"That'll be fun," Bobby commented. "Where's the bucket?"

* * *

Alex ran down the staircase, skidding as she turned the corner at the bottom, her bare feet slapping against the stone floor. She saw Ellen at the door to Kim's rooms and slowed, looking past her.

"Is Dean in there?"

"Alex, now might not be the best time," Ellen said, shifting to block the doorway. She was here because Sam had told her to let no one else in.

"What the hell are you talking about, Ellen?" Alex snapped at her, moving back the other way and staring at her as she moved as well. "Let me through!"

"Wait a minute, okay? Just one second –" Ellen put her hand out, turning to the short hall behind her that led into the room. "Bobby, Alex is here –"

It wasn't Bobby who appeared in the doorway, but Sam. He looked at Ellen and past her to Alex.

"Not yet, Alex," he said quietly. "This is something you don't need to see."

"What is wrong with you?" she said, pushing past Ellen and angling to get past Sam. "I –"

* * *

The transition from unconsciousness to awareness was shockingly abrupt. Dean flinched back against the chair at the screaming, high-pitched sound that had catapulted him into consciousness, his hearing overwhelmed by the cacophony of other noise that lay beneath it, jumbled and deafening. He opened his eyes and shut them again, the brilliance of the overhead fluorescents blinding him instantly, a blurred impression of white and colour in the second's glimpse unresolvable.

"He's awake."

The voice rolled like thunder, filling his head as the high-pitched sound ceased, echoing oddly from the hard, slick surfaces in the room. He could hear rushing. Pounding. A clanging noise. Deeper booming in a number of rhythms. Scratching. The too-loud noises and too-bright lights and the overwhelming scent of living blood in the room goaded the voracious hunger, shredding his organs with its ravening teeth, his veins burning, the caustic insistence of the vampire's blood filling and spreading through every cell.

He could feel a thrum in his chest, vibrations in his throat but he didn't realise the deep, wild-animal keening he could hear was coming from him, whistling out between his teeth as he tensed every muscle against the conflagration inside his body.

* * *

Sam gripped Alex's arms and pushed her back to the door. "No. Dean was clear, he doesn't want you in there," he said tightly. "Just wait."

The words hit her like a slap and she took a step back from him. "Why?"

"He doesn't want you to see him like this, okay?" Sam said, looking at Ellen. "He's not – it's not all him."

"Alex, listen to him," Ellen said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and pulling her back.

"He said that?" Alex ignored Ellen and looked at Sam.

* * *

"Do something!" Bobby yelled at Kim as Dean's head tipped back and his fingers curled around the arms of the chair, muscles rigidly contracted and tendon and sinew standing out with the pain. His lips were drawn back and they could see the fangs, long and bristling, fully descended over the human teeth. The sound forced out of him was primal agony and under it, they could hear the creak of the hardened steel handcuffs, could see the links of the chains connecting them stretching slowly.

"Christ, he'll be out of those in a minute," Bobby yelled, striding across the room. "Sam! Get your ass in here and help me hold him."

He walked behind the chair, wrapping his arms around Dean's head. "Kim, get that tube ready to go, we'll have seconds to get this into him."

* * *

Sam looked at Alex and turned abruptly, walking fast back into the room. Alex felt Ellen's hand tighten on her shoulder and she swung around, breaking the hold and following Sam in, hearing the low snarl, her eyes immediately finding the source.

Half-hidden behind his brother and Bobby and Kim, she watched Dean as he fought the restraints and the hands that gripped his shoulders, head and neck; saw his lips draw back from a mass of gleaming, pointed fangs that filled his mouth, his skin smooth and pale and hard, the light freckles over his nose and cheeks standing out against the lack of colour underneath, every muscle contracted and rigid.

Kim nodded and took the lubricated end of the tube from Merrin, stepping reluctantly to the chair as Sam took the other side.

"Oliver, bring it," Bobby snarled, his eyes on the lengthening links. "NOW!"

Oliver grabbed the jug and half-ran to Kim. She looked at Bobby anxiously. "I have to do this slowly, make sure I don't get the trachea!"

"Just do it. We'll hold him still."

Kim lifted the tube as Alex ran to them, dropping in front of Dean, her hand flashing out to grip his. His eyes flew open, the irises blood-red and almost pupilless as he stared at her. She could see the mixture of rage and fear in them, his face unfamiliar, features twisted into a savage mask. Her pulse accelerated and she ignored the shiver that ran through her. Behind the animalistic fury he was in there, she told herself, he was still in there and still himself.

"Dean, come on, fight," she said, leaning closer, her fingers tightening hard around his. "Come back."

He lunged toward her, almost breaking Bobby and Sam's hold on him, pulling them forward and flicking them back, rocking the chair. The soft whine of the stressed metal of the handcuffs could hardly be heard but Bobby's eyes were fixed on the chain links as they stretched out a little further.

"Alex, get away from him!" Sam yelled at her, struggling to hold his brother's shoulders as Kim looked at Bobby, fighting against the vampire strength to pull his head back again.

Alex ignored him, teeth snapping together as she forced herself not to flinch backward, staring into the carnelian irises. She saw Dean's expression flicker, saw him blink rapidly as he sucked in a deep breath, the low, rumbling growl ceasing for a moment before resuming.

"No! He can do this," she said sharply to Sam, raising her voice to be heard over the noise coming from the man in front of her, her gaze fixed on Dean's face. She saw the snarl twisting his mouth falter for a second, saw the tendons in his neck soften minutely. "You can, you can beat it."

She didn't realise she was holding her breath as she watched his eyes slowly focus on her, watched the red film across the whites thin out and his pupils expand, his face smooth out and the growling noise stop. The rigidity vanished and he slumped back in the chair, the cuff chains clinking against each other. Bobby looked at Sam, loosening his hold.

"Dean?"

Dean's eyes were almost closed as he tilted his head to one side to look at his brother. The room stank of blood, thick and red. He felt his mouth fill with saliva at the smell and swallowed hard.

"Stop yelling at me, Sam," he said softly.

"You got it?"

"For now," Dean said, exhaustion shaking his voice. "Comes and goes, but it's getting stronger. We gotta do this."

He looked down at Alex, kneeling in front of him. "I told Sam not to let you in," he said, his voice hoarse.

"He passed along the message," she told him, getting to her feet and moving to the side of the chair as Kim took the jug from Oliver. "I ignored it."

"Dean, you ready?" Bobby asked.

"Yeah," he said, looking at the glass jug warily, nose wrinkling up as he caught the odour. "All of it?"

Oliver nodded. "My advice would be to drink it as fast as you can."

The hunger was barely leashed; Dean could feel it building up again. He nodded abruptly and Kim brought the jug to his lips, tipping it up as he lifted his head. _Tasted worse than it smelled, worse than the black crap Ruby had poured down his throat_. The thought flashed through his mind as he swallowed the steady flow as fast as he could.

Kim pulled back as the last mouthful emptied the jug, looking at him. The fangs had withdrawn, his irises were still a deep red, the whites tinged with blood, his skin was hard-looking, the bones standing out under it, sharp and angular.

Dean looked around at Oliver. "Is that i–?"

The convulsion struck violently and without warning, and Kim skittered aside as a stream of blood and bile arced from Dean's mouth onto the floor in front of him, his body clenched tight as the cure pulled the vampire blood from every cell and vein and capillary, filling his stomach and being ejected again.

"Get the cuffs off!" Merrin ordered, catching his head and wiping the bloody mess from his mouth as he seized again, eyes rolling back into his head, bone-deep shudders rattling through him. "Get him on the floor!"

Falling to his hands and knees when he was released, Dean dropped onto his side, the blood continuing to be ejected from his stomach, each drop leaving a trail of corrosive agony along the blood paths.

Alex knelt behind him, sliding an arm under his neck and shoulder, talking to him softly and holding him tightly against the spasms that shook through him, his body curled inward around the pain. His skin was hot and paper dry under her hands, and she looked around to Kim.

"He's burning up here."

"Is it working?" Bobby asked, his voice barely a whisper as Merrin passed Alex a cloth soaked in water and she pressed it against his forehead and throat.

"It seems to be," Oliver answered him, watching the process intently. "The blood is definitely being withdrawn. The process would be excruciating, of course."

Sam glared at him. "Is there anything we can do?"

"No," Kim said. "The process isn't static. Once the blood is gone, he'll be exhausted, both from this – procedure – and whatever it was he's gone through before. Then we can do something, but right now, I can't give him anything – I wouldn't know what to give him – in case it counteracts what he's taken."

* * *

Deaf. Blind. Paralysed.

Dean lay on his back, his eyes open but unable to make out more than shapes in the dim room.

Kim had told him, when the blood had finally gone completely from his system and he'd returned to the world, that it would take some time to get used to having the normal range of his senses again, and probably a couple of weeks for his body to recover from the punishment it'd taken, super-charged when he'd gone through the nest like a killing machine, everything pushed far past the normal limits.

He felt a hand curling around his and looked down, seeing a blurry shape that slowly resolved into a familiar one as she sat down in the chair beside the bed. He couldn't see her face, but her scent enveloped him and he felt some of his tension leave.

"Good times, huh?" he said, his voice cracked and raw.

"Better than Disneyland," she agreed softly. "You want some water?"

"Yeah." His mouth and throat felt like a desert. Vocal chords had probably taken a beating with all the Wild Kingdom noises he'd been making, he thought, but the cure was dehydrating as well.

She came back to the bed with a glass and a straw, holding it as he sucked the cold water down.

"More?"

He shook his head. "No."

He waited until she'd put the glass on the nightstand and returned to the chair before he looked uncomfortably at her, squinting a little as he tried to get his eyes to focus. "Guess there's no chance of you forgetting that."

She slid her hand under his, fingers closing around it, and he heard the smile in her voice. "No, but that's okay."

"How is that okay?"

"Because being kept out of it, being kept away, would've been worse," she said gently, looking at his expression, doubt underlaid by something else, something that wanted to believe. "You don't really get it, do you?"

"Get what?" he asked warily. He hadn't wanted her to see him as a monster. Hadn't wanted that memory to be there when she looked at him. Or in her dreams. He had enough bad dreams for the both of them.

"It's okay that it's not all rainbows and sunshine, Dean." He felt her lift his hand, felt her smooth skin against the back of it as she held it against her cheek. "It's still you, still –"

He heard her take in a deep breath and let it out. "There isn't anything in you, or about you, that I would want to be different."

Dean felt his breath catch at that. There were a million things he'd change, if he could.

"Every scar, every choice, everything you've thought and felt and done," she continued tentatively, reaching for the words to describe what she felt to him. They were all tangled up in those feelings and she thought there were no words at all for some of what she needed to tell him. "All of it was essential to make who you are, right now, right this minute."

"I might –" he started to say and stopped to clear the thickness in his throat. "I might have been better without a lot of that stuff."

"No. Different maybe, but not better," she said, with a certainty that shook him.

"You don't know that."

"I know it for me."

"You'd rather have a head-case than someone without all the scars –?"

"I'd rather have you, the way you are," she cut him off, her fingers tightening on his.

He didn't know what to say to that. Something, so far down he wasn't even sure where it was, loosened at the words, unwound, a little. Some fear that he hadn't looked at in a long, long time. Hadn't acknowledged. He closed his eyes, returning the pressure on her fingers.

"Oliver gave me a paste for you that's supposed to help with all the wear and tear," Alex said, after a moment. "Feel like a massage?"

He coughed slightly. "Full service?"

She snorted, swallowing the laugh. "If you're up to it."

His mouth lifted at one corner as he opened his eyes, still not seeing her too well, able to make out the gleam of her smile.

* * *

Adam sat on the bank of the river, hidden by the sweeping canopy of the willows that lined the edge, staring sightlessly at the gleam and sparkle of the water as it hurried past.

No one had said anything. They hadn't needed to, he thought bleakly. It was in their faces when they didn't look at him. In the silence that fell when he came into a room. In the chill blankness when he managed to catch someone's eye.

He couldn't explain what had happened, not exactly. He'd frozen, seeing the vampires rising up around Dean. For the first time, it hadn't been taking shots at a distance, or hearing about it, or reading about it, but surrounded by it – the brilliance of the blood that had dripped from the long teeth, the overpowering stench of rotted flowers and rotten meat that had choked him as they'd closed in, the unbelievable strength and speed and – and – and _other_ness of them.

Monsters.

_Real. _

He hadn't been able to process that thought at all until they'd dragged his brother down and vanished with him.

There was a soft crack behind him and his head snapped around, seeing Christine ducking as she came in between the long, delicate branches.

"Hey," she said, dropping to sit cross-legged beside him.

"Hey," he returned, cautiously. She looked at the river, absently plucking a grass stalk and stripping the seeds from the end.

"You're taking this too hard, you know," she said, turning her head to look at him. "Nobody blames you for what happened."

He snorted, looking at the water. "Sure. Right."

"They don't," Chris insisted. "Rufus said it was a good lesson for everyone, that it's easy to freeze up in the moment and we all had to work on getting through that."

Adam's mouth twisted up. "Funny, he didn't say that to me."

Her brow lifted. "What'd he say?"

Adam ducked his head, the memory still stinging. "He said that until I learn to take it seriously, I'll be training with the keep guards and Franklin."

"What?"

He glanced at her, trying to gauge the genuineness of her reaction. She seemed sincere, her sky-blue eyes wide with surprise. There was a not-so-subtle hierarchy between the civilian guards and the hunters, nowhere more evident than in the trainees of both groups. The hunters considered themselves elite, the guards considered themselves professional. That neither Franklin or Rufus paid any attention to it didn't seem to bother anyone. But he knew she saw the move as a demotion, a severe one.

"It's okay," he said, relaxing a little. "I screwed up. I deserve it."

"It could've happened to any–"

"But it didn't, Chris," he cut in. "It happened to me." He turned away from her. "And it happened because I haven't been looking at this stuff the way I should've been."

"Come on, Adam," she said, shaking her head. "Everyone knows that of all of us, you've seen the least of what's been going on the last three years."

He smiled humourlessly. "Yeah, angel condom."

She frowned at the term. Someone had overheard one of the older hunters use the phrase, and it'd spread around quickly. She'd ignored it, thinking it was fairly typical of the maturity of the young men in both the keep garrison and the hunters enclave.

"That was hardly your fault," she said.

Adam sighed, leaning back. "No," he agreed. "Doesn't matter."

"Look, I can talk to Rufus – or Dean –"

"No!" He sat up fast, looking at her in alarm. "Don't."

Recoiling a little at his vehemence, Christine shook her head. "Why not?"

"Because I told you, it's okay," he said shortly. "Franklin's tough but fair. And I don't – I need some time to figure this stuff out. So … don't, okay?"

"Okay," she said, shrugging a shoulder. "Doesn't mean you can't hang with us, you know that, right?"

He wasn't sure he wanted to. Wasn't sure he could deal with that, quite yet. "In a while, sure."

"Adam," she said, rolling onto one knee and stopping.

"Yeah."

"They're your brothers. You should talk to them," she said quietly.

He shook his head. "I don't think they're acknowledging that relationship any more, Chris."

She bit her lip, looking at his bowed head. He'd been difficult when he'd first gotten here, arrogant, to hide his fear, she'd thought. Renee had told her a little about him, and she'd found it hard to believe that he was functioning at all after what he'd been through. He might've frozen up in combat, but any one of them might've done it as well. His relationship to the Winchesters couldn't have helped any.

Getting to her feet, she slapped a friendly hand on his shoulder and turned away, ducking under the willow fronds and walking back up through the fields.

Adam looked up and watched her go. He wasn't sure if the offer of friendship was such a good idea. He didn't think he could face them now. Fitting in with the keep garrison was hard enough.

Dean was still recovering and he'd avoided Sam whenever possible, breathing a sigh of relief when the tall hunter had returned to order's safehold once he was sure his brother was on the mend. The memory of Sam's face, when they'd been in the tunnel, was one he couldn't shake free. He didn't think there was much chance of getting to know his half-brothers now.

* * *

_**Two weeks later.**_

Dean walked stiffly into the order's library. The healing ointment Oliver had given Alex was doing wonders, and he could move around without pain now. Kim had been astonished by the rapidity of his recovery, in fact. Another week or so and the stiffness would be gone, he thought. It was gradually working out with exercise. His vision had returned to what it had been and he was getting used to it. His hearing and sense of smell were normal again as well, although he found himself listening in the night, trying to stretch out his senses further.

He looked around the long table as he took the empty chair at the end. Bobby, Ellen, Rufus, Franklin, Boze, Jerome, Peter, Vince, Jasper, Katherine and Davis were seated already, Alex moving to the side to stand with Sam, Maurice and Father Emilio.

"Well?" Bobby looked at him dourly. "What's the good news?"

"Not much on the good news," Dean said slowly. "The, uh, vision I had … it wasn't so much as a vision as more of a 'welcome to the group' promo."

Ellen arched an eyebrow. "And what's that mean?"

"Like a quick-view history lesson," Dean said, shrugging. "And something else, the plans for the future."

The memories of those images were strong and vivid, and he told them what he'd seen in as much detail as he could. The room was silent when he'd finished.

"The dark-haired woman you saw could be Nintu," Katherine said, looking at Jerome. "She was supposed to be the dark side of Creation."

Ackers nodded sharply. "Those were the oldest legends."

"Who's Nintu again?" Bobby looked from Jerome to Katherine. "For the unwashed masses?"

Jerome sighed, pushing his glasses up his nose. "Ninhursag and Nintu, twin sisters of Creation. Ninhursag is the Sumerian name for the mother goddess, the earth goddess, but she's much older than that."

"The two goddesses created all life on Earth," Katherine stepped in impatiently. "Ninhursag made the animals, trees, life in general – natural life, her sister created the creatures that weren't natural, livings forms of evil, the things that go bump in the night."

"Huh," Bobby said, looking back at Jerome. "And this Nintu, she's the one we've got to thank for werewolves and vampires and such?"

Jerome scratched his brow as he nodded. "Yes. But the two goddesses were locked away, in a mountain, their prison sealed, according to the legend." He looked at Katherine, seeing her nod.

"Supposedly," she agreed, somewhat dryly. "In Peru."

"That's all fascinating," Dean said abruptly. "What's it got to do with the vampires?"

"Nintu brought forth vampires and werewolves – every unnatural creature – from her womb," Katherine told him. "She was their mother, as Ninhursag birthed humankind."

Felix cleared his throat, looking around the table. "There is another legend, about Nintu."

Jerome gestured at him. "Well? What is it?"

"That the first children of Nintu were the most powerful, that they could create the species to populate the world. They were also supposed to have been imprisoned when the goddesses were, but in different locations."

"Are we speculating that someone or something released the sisters and now they're releasing their first-born?" Sam asked, looking from Felix to Katherine.

"Ah … I'd need the texts to get this absolutely correct, but yes, I suppose so. The origins of Usiku are quite broadly documented, in African mythology –"

Jasper nodded. "And Raat Bhedeiyaa Bhut was well-known throughout India."

Boze looked at them. "Who?"

"Usiku was supposed to be the first vampire, the one who created all the others. Raat Bhedeiyaa Bhut was the first werewolf, in Hindi lore, born of the goddess and a wolf to take the hearts of men and therefore, their courage in the night," Jerome explained, gesturing at the books behind him. "We have a large selection on the origins of the monsters, but the one thing they all have in common, no matter which country or culture they're from, is that they were all born of a dark goddess, who walked through the land and left evil in her footsteps."

Dean thought of the face he'd seen, dark-skinned and pale-eyed. Usiku. _Good to know_.

"How the hell are we supposed to find and take them down?" he asked Jerome.

"Well, more importantly," Jasper said, looking around the table. "Who let the goddess out?"

"Slow down," Bobby growled. "We've got not one, but probably two goddesses who were safely locked away, now wandering around, and one of 'em is letting loose her original monster kiddies who can make more of themselves –"

"Provided they can find a population source, yes," Jerome interjected. Bobby scowled at him.

"And this is why we're seeing the packs and nest numbers going up so fast?" he finished, glancing at Dean.

Jasper looked at Jerome, one brow raised. "That just about covers it, I think."

The hunters looked at each other in the silence that filled the room.

"Is it just me, or is anyone else feeling a tad fucking persecuted here?" Franklin said caustically, breaking the silence. "Didn't we just get back from saving the goddamned world?"

Bobby looked across the table to Dean, who gave him a tired shrug.

"Alright, what can we do about it?"

Peter looked at him. "In the vaults, under the Vatican, there is an extensive library. We need what they have. Every Church hunter was trained with those texts and they do cover the origins – and the rituals required to get rid of them."

Turning to Jerome, Dean asked, "Can the French hunters get there? In any time frame that'll do us any good?"

The scholar nodded. "They're already on their way. I don't know how long it will take them, Dean." He gestured to the library. "We have a lot of the ancient mythology here, we will begin with that and the other chapters will begin researching as well."

"Do we think this is connected in any way to the tablets of God?" Davis asked, leaning back in his chair as he looked at Jerome. "The timing is rather … coincidental … after six thousands of no change."

"The timing is not coincidental," Father Emilio said abruptly, walking to the table. "Lucifer was destroyed – utterly. And Hell had no ruler. I suspect that these events are due to the fact that a new ruler has risen in the accursed plane and has been busy." He looked at Jerome. "There has been no response from the Tibetan chapter, has there?"

Jerome shook his head.

"Then it seems probable that they have been destroyed, and whatever it was that the Qaddiysh left there has been taken," the priest said.

"We can't verify that," Jerome said uneasily.

"Do you think that these events are unconnected, Jerome?" Father Emilio asked bluntly.

"No," the scholar admitted reluctantly.

Father Emilio turned to Dean. "Your brother told me that you can call on a angel?"

Dean nodded, his eyes rolling slightly. He should've thought of Cas himself. "Yeah, sometimes."

"It might be that the angel can tell us what has happened in Hell, what is happening in the world," the priest said tightly. "And it might be that he can help us to contact the Qaddiysh, yes?"

* * *

Dean stood on the flat roof of the Keep, looking at the stars that filled the clear night sky. Franklin was right, he thought. It did feel like fucking persecution. He pushed the thought aside and closed his eyes.

"Cas? Uh, Dean to Cas, you receiving? Need some help here," he muttered to himself.

The soft beat of wings was behind him, and he turned around, looking at the angel's vessel, trench coat hem lifting in the slight breeze.

The angel looked at him questioningly. "Why have you called me here, Dean?"

Dean wondered where to start. "Seems like killing Lucifer opened up a whole new can of worms," he said. "We're not the only ones looking for the way to shut down Hell, and we've got other problems on the side."


	4. Chapter 4 Highways and Byways

**Chapter 4 Highways and Byways**

* * *

_**October 2012, Limoux, France**_

Elena opened her eyes, looking around and straightening in her seat. "_Merde_, how long was I sleeping for?"

"Two hours," Luc said, glancing sideways at her. "Just passed through Limoux."

"Do you think Francois is right, Luc?" she asked, looking out at the countryside. "Will it be quicker to find a boat on the coast and sail there?"

"Safer, probably," the man said, with a shrug. "Faster depends on the weather, what kind of boat, fuel, the if-factor, _non_?"

She sighed. Before the world had ended with a crash, it would've been a twelve-hour drive from Lourdes to Rome. Now, that timeframe was elastic. Many of the major roads were either impassable or just gone, the earth movements and storms wiping them effectively. The smaller roads were as risky. They'd already run into two blockades, one manned by a nest of ghouls, living off the small town behind it, the other by a group of survivors who were far too nervous about the monsters that had emerged in the wreckage of their world to think of communicating with travellers. The vehicles were full of bullet holes that had been the sum total of their welcome.

"How far to the coast?"

"Fifty miles to Port-Au-Nouvelle," he told her, gesturing at the map that lay between them. "It was a shipping port, the steel ships should still be there, mostly intact."

She nodded, thinking it through. There would be diesel fuel. The big ports had quantities, held safe underground. It would cut almost a thousand kilometres from the land route, and as Luc had already pointed out, it would be safer. They could load what they needed on board, and use it as a base at the mouth of the Tiber, and the river would be a more stealthy way to get into the city.

"Let's go."

Luc turned south, and Elena watched in the mirror as the truck behind them made the turn. There were only six of them for this mission and it had cut their small force in half. She was not too worried about those who were staying behind to protect the chapter's safehold in the mountains – it would take an army, a _real_ army, to be able to break through the defences there, but it was of concern that they were so few here. The Americans had found many more to help keep the order safe, she thought, a little enviously. And they were training their young people. She wondered if any of the trainees had a yearning to see Europe. The thought brought an inward snort of derision. Over there and over here, the troubles were the same.

The radio crackled. "I see my suggestion is being adopted," Francois said, the delight clearly audible in his voice.

"_Oui_, Francois," she said dryly into the mike. "We bow down to your superior intelligence once again."

"I'm glad you've finally decided to acknowledge it, _chère_," he said. "Where are we going?"

"Port-Au-Nouvelle," she answered. "We'll be there in an hour, so get the others ready."

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Kansas**_

Castiel looked around the office, noting the familiar faces and the new ones.

"We felt the leadership of Hell pass to a new King two months ago," he said, returning his gaze to Dean. "It did not go to the remaining Fallen."

"An' what does that mean?" Bobby asked truculently. "Who did it go to?"

Cas shrugged. "We don't know."

"Alright," Dean said, looking at Bobby's bitter grimace. "Do you know what this new king has been doing?"

"The percussion of the demon tablet being unsealed was felt everywhere, on every plane," Cas said readily. "And we perceived that many things were released at the same time."

"Released?" Ellen asked.

"Many things?" Peter said at the same time. "What things?"

"Things that had been locked away," Castiel said, looking at him.

"Helpful," Bobby said sarcastically. "You got details?"

"God did not create all life on earth," the angel said, turning to him. "He created forces that would do that work for Him. They were known in the past as the Mothers."

"Yeah, that bit we've figured out," Dean said, glancing at Katherine. "We need to know how to put them back in their cell."

Cas looked at him patiently. "You can't."

The men and women in the room looked at each other and Dean stared at the angel.

"Can't?"

"When they finished their tasks, God locked them away, Dean," Cas said. "They were never to be released again. They are pure creative forces. Only their creator can control them."

"These tablets, Castiel," Peter said, glancing at Dean and back to the angel. "The legend said that there were five of them?"

The angel looked away. "We have little more than legend to go on as well," he said slowly. "The Mattara – the Voice and Scribe of God – disappeared two thousand years ago. It was rumoured that he had completed a task for the protection of mankind. That's all I know of it."

"But the tablets were given to the Qaddiysh?" Jasper said softly, looking at him. "The legend says they were guardians of all knowledge to be passed to humanity."

"And whatever happened in Tibet, it seems likely that at least one of the tablets was hidden there, when Lucifer rose," Jerome added.

"We need your help, Cas," Dean said. "We need to find out what the hell is going on before we end up dead."

"I can take you to Tibet," Castiel said. "And to Jordan, to speak to the Watchers, but that is all, Dean. The conspiracy in Heaven has been more difficult to unravel than we thought and I am needed there. I'll return for you tomorrow evening. Does that give you enough time to prepare?"

Dean nodded and the room echoed softly with the rustle of wings as Castiel disappeared.

Dean glanced at Sam. "Who goes?"

"I do," Jasper said abruptly. "You need someone who knows what they're looking for."

Dean glanced at the man and nodded slowly. "Alright. Sam, Peter, you too."

Sam nodded. "What do we need?"

"The usual, I guess," Dean said, rubbing the heel of his hand against his brow. "Bobby, Ellen, you're on point here." He looked at the others. "Rufus, we need as many small teams as we can get out to find any survivors. If we can't get rid of those bitches, we can at least reduce the feedlot for their offspring."

"Jackson have any good ideas about towns and cities, Alex?" Rufus asked, turning to her.

"He thought people would have a better chance surviving along the plains because the farmland is rich but nowhere specific. It's mostly small towns, small cities, from Texas to South Dakota," she said, remembering the old farmer's advice. "In small groups, the survival rate might be good."

"Then we'll head north, and quarter the damned states until we find them," Rufus said.

* * *

_**Oklahoma**_

She walked unhurriedly, pale hair lifting and twisting out behind her. There was much that needed to be restored, fed with the energy that seeped from her as she moved. Perished or poisoned, the world was not as she had left it, filled with the deep well of life when she had been swept into the box and bound tightly with her sister.

There would be no rebinding. She could not feel the force of control that had governed her movement the last time. Instead the world called to her and she walked on.

The ground trembled as she passed over it and long-dormant seed awoke. Every form of life stirred restlessly, fur and feather and scale and skin quivering in the changed air, water, earth. Instinctive imperatives filled them, amplified and urgent, beating in their blood streams and predator forgot prey and prey forgot danger.

* * *

_**West Keep, Lebanon**_

Alex opened the windows to the warm night, breathing in the scents of the fields and woods to the west. The Indian summer had taken over the frigid, frost-laden days and nights two days ago, the high responsible moving south and east and a warm, southern wind pushing up the plains.

Standing in a t-shirt and jeans, Dean looked down at the thick, down-filled coat lying on the chair in front of him. "Just how cold do you think Tibet's gonna be?"

Turning around, Alex glanced at the coat. "Latitude, altitude, mid-fall … it'll be cold. How long do you think you'll be there?"

"No idea, not all that long," he frowned. "Jordan's not likely to be cold, is it?"

He had only the vaguest idea of where Jordan was. Somewhere in the Middle East, desert, sand.

"Desert's always cold at night," she supplied unhelpfully. "Wear something you don't mind throwing if it's not suitable."

"Yeah."

"Since when did you start caring about being warm or cold on a job?" she asked him quizzically, opening the other window.

There was a long silence and Alex glanced over her shoulder, seeing him looking down at the coat mulishly.

"Dean?"

He exhaled gustily, turning and looking at her. "Since being turbo-charged changed my tolerances, okay?" he admitted unwillingly. It'd had come as shock, affecting more than just if he was warm or cold. He'd asked Kim about it, in a roundabout way, and she'd told him that it was possible that the cure had thinned his blood, or damaged his circulation in some way. She thought it was likely to be temporary and he was hoping that it was.

"Ooh … that's why –"

He scowled at the floor, picking up the coat and shoving it back in the closet, grabbing a couple of long-sleeved shirts and tossing them onto the chair. "Yeah, that's why!"

Turning at her soft snort, he stared at her belligerently. "So now it's funny?"

Alex smiled, walking to him. "No, it was just … unusual … that's all. I didn't think of the cold."

Looking at him, she slid her arms around him. "Not cold now?"

"No, but now I'm all –"

He felt the familiar flutter in his stomach as she reached up and her lips brushed over his, his argument forgotten as he pulled her close and felt a deep, lazy pulse spiral slowly up and out through him, catching at his breath and crackling through his nerves.

It was too easy for her, he thought groggily, and not for the first time as his senses swam and struggled amidst the barrage of sensation that flooded them, nervous system registering her hands on his skin as the kiss deepened, pulling him down.

On some level, he was aware that it wasn't all physical, this heat and arousal and reaching, tormenting ache, that he … _gave up? gave in? let go?_ … in a way he'd never even thought of allowing himself before because she knew - knew everything, the scars and the darkness and the fear and it hadn't changed the way she looked at him. He was only Dean with her, not son or brother or protector or guardian or … anything else. And physical intimacy had always been the way he'd tried to connect. With her, the closeness became something else. Something that stripped away every wall and barricade. Something that held him and breathed with him and wouldn't let him go.

The breeze from the windows sighed through the room, filled with the scents of earth and woods and water, a silken kiss over heated skin. Pressure and heat swallowed him and a jittery tremble sabotaged every attempt he made to regain some control, quicksilver fast and shockingly random. Opening his eyes and seeing her, abandoned to the pleasure they made between them – eyes unfocussed, hair and skin damp and glowing, lips parted – and blinking them shut because that sight was too fucking much, speeding the hot uncoiling and driving him, lashing him, deeper and faster, heart booming in his ears and the unbearable ache starting to shatter inside. No division, just a wild sea, soft, tight ripples and spasms that drew everything from him as he rocked helplessly, deep inside her.

* * *

The breeze had died away and the room was warm and still. Dean heard the soft whisper of her breath, felt it against his skin. The tension that had gone completely was gradually seeping back into him, despite the languid heaviness in his body. He'd wanted to tell her but the words got caught, somewhere in his chest, rammed back down.

_Carved you. Changed you_. The voice whispered in his mind and his arms tightened around the woman in them involuntarily. No, that's a lie. _Demons lie_.

But sometimes, he knew, they didn't.

And the truth was he didn't know what to believe. He hadn't felt that crawling, itching presence for months now. The corrosive doubts rose only when he tried to tell her, tried to show her. Everything else, he knew what he was doing, knew what the right thing to do was. Not here.

_Outcast_. Forty years in the pit. She'd challenged that. But he didn't know what to believe. The memories were still there. Every detail. Every scream. _Unclean_. You were raised, Jerome had said. But what did that mean, exactly? Sins wiped away? All forgiven? It hadn't changed anything for him. Hadn't convinced him that anything had changed. _Unworthy_. He'd been prepared to be a partner to Lisa, a father … he hadn't considered himself unworthy then. Hadn't considered it because in some ways it hadn't been a gift, but a penance. No yearning ache. No wordless need. No unacknowledged feeling that he couldn't look at, couldn't admit to, couldn't face. Just … another responsibility to shoulder. And he could do that. He'd always been able to do that.

He lifted his hand, lightly pushing back the damp curls from her forehead, his fingertips slipping through the soft strands. This wasn't a responsibility he had to bear. It wasn't a duty. It wasn't even because he'd known she could keep him human, despite what he'd told Death. It was what he'd had and had lost and had been searching for ever since. But after all that he'd done, all that had been done to him, all that had happened … in the depths of his soul, he didn't really believe he would ever deserve to have it again.

* * *

_**St Elphege Monastery, Tibet**_

The blackness ended and he felt the jarring drop to the stone floor, shivering a little as the icy wind blew through the open arches and pierced his clothing easily. Tibet was fucking cold.

"What are we looking for?" Sam asked, looking around the open hall. The staining on the stone pavers caught his eye and he crossed to it, kneeling as he stared at the uneven rust-coloured patch.

"Any surviving members –" Dean said, looking at Cas.

"We need to see what is in the vaults," Jasper cut in, moving toward the interior door.

Castiel closed his eyes briefly and shook his head. "There's no one alive in here except us," he told Dean.

Peter followed Jasper out of the hall and Sam got to his feet, looking at his brother. "Whatever happened here, we missed it."

Dean nodded. "Come on, maybe we can salvage something from this."

Like the safehold in Kansas, the chapter's collection rooms were extensive. Level after level of books, artefacts, weapons and work and store rooms. Dean looked around as they passed through the rooms, wondering if it was possible to move this stuff from here.

"Cas, can you, uh, teleport all this stuff back to Kansas?" he asked as they descended a narrow stone stair, the centres worn deep, the roof sloping down too close for any of them to move upright.

"Yes," the angel said abruptly. "That might be the safest option to prevent … anyone else from accessing it."

Jasper lit a torch, lifting it from the simple metal sconce on the rough stone wall and holding it up as he walked into the long cavern. In the steady golden light, the destruction was easy to see.

Dean looked around at the emptied boxes and baskets and chests, books ripped to shreds, their pages scattered like leaf-fall over the floor, broken ceramics and glass sparkling in the torch-light, bags slit open and spilling their contents.

"Guess the tablet was in here," he said flatly.

"Yes," Jasper said, lowering himself stiffly beside a box that had been flipped over but was intact. "It would seem that way."

* * *

Dean and Sam found the bodies as Castiel moved through the levels with Peter and Jasper, transferring the chapter's library and collections back to Lebanon.

Fourteen, Dean counted, all of them monks. All of them with the tell-tale residue of sulphur. The demons had largely ignored the libraries, focussing on the sections where the ancient objects and artefacts had been stored. Like the safehold in Lebanon, those had been catalogued and numbered, and as he looked through them cursorily, he wondered why the demons had left them intact. Arrogance, or coming back for them? There was a lot of stuff here that had been specifically designed for war against demons. He looked up at Peter and Cas as they returned for another load.

"We taking it all?"

Peter shook his head. "It would take too long," he said regretfully. "We must hide what we cannot take, and hope that we will have another opportunity in the future to retrieve it."

"Hide it?" Dean looked at him doubtfully.

"Seal it in," Castiel said shortly.

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Lebanon**_

Jerome and Davis stared around the rooms, filled to every corner now with the texts, books and crates of the Tibetan monastery.

"Tell the angel that he'll have to take some to the keeps," Davis said, edging around a pile. "We don't have room for any more here."

Jerome nodded as Aaron, Father Emilio and Oliver walked back into the library again, dragging their furniture trolleys, picking up another pile each to take to the lower levels. Castiel had told him that the monks had been killed, to the last one. If the demon had found out about the other chapters, they would be in danger as well. The monastery had been less well protected, partly because they had served another purpose and had always been available to people, partly because they'd believed themselves to be protected by their location, by the ruggedness of the terrain. It had been a terrible error.

He eased the wheelchair out of the maze of books and boxes and down the ramp, going to the computers. They needed more help to move the things Castiel was bringing and he needed to warn the other chapters to increase their protective walls.

* * *

_**Devil's Lake, North Dakota**_

The rustle of the leaves was deliberate, Rufus knew. As deliberate as the cocking of the gun next to his ear.

"Get up, friend, nice and easy," the low voice said behind him and he put down the binoculars slowly, keeping both hands visible as he rolled onto his back and looked up at the man standing there.

In camouflaged hunting gear, the tough, wiry frame was mostly hidden. The face was distinctive, bold features hollowed out by hunger and bright blue eyes under dark auburn brows, the wide mouth compressed now as he looked down.

"Elias?" Rufus frowned up at him. "That you?"

"Who's asking?" the man's brows drew together sharply, staring at Rufus, trying to see past the mottled green and grey paint to the face beneath. "Turner?"

"Hell, yeah," Rufus said, putting his hands down and shifting to a sitting position. "Must be over nine years, eh?"

"More like eleven," Elias said, lowering the barrel and extending a hand. Rufus took it. "What the hell are you doing here spying on me?"

"Looking for survivors," Rufus said, brushing the leaf matter from his clothes. "How'd you survive the locusts?"

"Found a cave system," he said, gesturing north. "A deep one and huddled there for about a week. Where are you located?"

"Kansas," Rufus said, turning to look down at the camp site in the valley below them. "How many have you got?"

"A hundred and fifty," Elias said, following his gaze. "Three of us looking after them, we've just been picking up a few here and there since the virus took off." He looked over the hunter. "You look … fed."

Rufus grinned, teeth bright against the mottled shades of paint over his skin. "Oh hell, you got no idea."

* * *

"How many?" Elias turned to look at him, coffee pot held halfway between the fire and the cup.

"Somewhere around six thousand, both states, now," Rufus repeated, waving his cup. He looked around the small camp. "We've got stock and grain and shelter, and around thirty hunters, more in training, Franklin – you meet Franklin?" he stopped to ask, one brow raised. Elias frowned in thought as he put the pot back on the fire.

"Rooney? Ex-Army, tough as boots?"

Rufus nodded. "Yep, he's got about sixty learning soldiering."

"How'd you get that set up with the –" Elias stopped, gesturing vaguely around at the woods surrounding. "Everything's been goin' on?"

"Had a good leader," Rufus said quietly, thinking that was an understatement. No one else could've done it, he knew. No one else that particular history, and raw determination, the odd charm and magnetic … something … to have drawn such a varied group and united them all. No one else he could think of could've killed the Horsemen – or befriended Death – or an angel – or any of the other things that feat had taken. "Dean Winchester."

Elias' brows rose thoughtfully. "Heard of him, John's boy, wasn't he? And his brother, Sam?"

"You meet John?"

"In '88, briefly. He and Geny Tasarov helped out my dad with a tsuakerag up in Yellowknife. Saved my dad's life," Elias said, staring at the fire. "They brought him back to our place. He didn't stay long, said he wanted to get back to his boys."

"You'd have been – what? Twenty? Twenty-one?" Rufus hazarded a guess.

"I was nineteen, pissed as that my dad hadn't let me go along," Elias said with a snort. "Until they got back and I saw them. I don't know how they made it home. Don't know how they managed to save my father. John had a set of claw wounds across his back like he'd been attacked by that cartoon character – Wolverine," he said, shaking his head.

"Determined," Rufus commented.

Elias shot him a look. "Yeah. And his son's like him?"

"Not much in the detail but yeah, same at the core. Determined," Rufus said, rubbing a hand over his jaw. "Doesn't care if anyone follows him or not, he just gets on with it – and of course, we do, follow him, I mean."

"Well, we'll join you," Elias said quietly. "Can't keep these people up here, woods are too big now, too many things in 'em." He gestured to the cabins on the other side of the camp. "I got Moses Johnson's girl here, and Herb Tucker."

"What happened to Moses?"

"Got into a fight with a bunch of demons," Elias said. "Getting some of these people clear. Didn't make it out."

Rufus nodded. A lot of hunters had failed to make it out of fights with demons. And other assorted creatures over the last three years. The weight of numbers had not been on their side.

"You heard of anyone else? Surviving?"

"I caught some chatter on the CB, months ago now," Elias said slowly, finishing his coffee and pouring the grounds out. "Thought it sounded like Nate and Toby, but I couldn't get 'em to hear me and it dropped out and I couldn't find them again."

"That's promising," Rufus said, looking at him. "Before or after Baal swept the country?"

"After," Elias said. "About a month after, that's why I kept looking for them."

"Well, you got help now, man," Rufus said, stretching up. "Plenty of it. If they've survived, we'll find 'em."

* * *

_**Tafilah, Jordan**_

The night sky above the cracked and dry rocky canyons was black, and ablaze with stars, great sweeps of light, so many stars that they weren't discernible individually. Dean looked down at the ground, dark but visible nonetheless, outlined in that faint white light. He shivered as the wind moaned softly through the canyon.

"Just down here," Castiel said, walking away from them and following the curve of the rock down to the canyon floor. Glancing at Sam, Dean walked after him, dragging the edges of his coat closer.

Behind them, Jasper and Peter looked around interestedly, Jasper's eyes narrowing as they came down to the sand floor of the ravine and followed its twists and turns into a narrow crevice. To their right, the tall cliffs had been smoothed and carved, into a facade of buildings, fantastical and towering and elegant.

"Is this Petra?" he asked the angel. Cas shook his head.

"No," he said shortly, walking to the largest of the fronts, with a broad stone terrace and wide, shallow steps leading up to it, the elaborate doorway half hidden in the shadows of the columned portico.

He laid his hands against the stone door and closed his eyes. After a moment the design lit up within the stone, and the edges began to glow a pale gold. Stepping back, Cas opened his eyes and the door opened.

Sam looked at the two men standing in the doorway. Both taller than him, by several inches, he thought, broad-shouldered, with long hair, drawn back from perfectly sculpted, masculine faces. The gradual recognition of what they were was a delayed shock.

_Angels_.

He drew in a deep breath. But not in vessels. The thought hit him a second later as he realised that no human had the precise symmetry of the two in front of him.

"Castiel," the man to the left said slowly, dark green eyes flicking over the men behind the angel. "Why are you here?"

"Araquiel, the Word is in danger," Cas said quietly. "The Demon tablet has already been found. By Hell."

The man on the right made a noise in his throat. "I told you we shouldn't have entrusted it to humans."

"There was no other place," Araquiel reminded him mildly, looking back at Cas. "Who are they?"

Cas turned and glanced back at the men standing on the stone terrace. "They are hunters and scholars. The unsealing of the tablet has affected the human survivors of Lucifer's rise, more so than Heaven or you."

"It will affect everything," the blond man snapped. "If the other tablets are found by the new ruler, then nothing can be done."

"Precisely," Cas agreed. "We need your help."

"Come inside," Araquiel stepped back from the threshold, gesturing impatiently at the other man.

Dean followed Cas into the high-ceilinged hall, looking around. Doorways, tall and wide stood to either side of the cavernous space, lit by flickering torches. The carvings continued around the interior, only a few pieces of furniture to soften the austere appearance.

"Araquiel, this is Dean and Sam Winchester," Cas said, turning as the Watcher closed the door behind them. "Peter Andante, of the Vatican. Jasper Moore, initiate of the Litteris Hominae."

Jasper raised a brow but said nothing, looking at the two men who had been angels as they nodded brusquely at the men.

"Araquiel and Gadriel, the _Irin We-Qadishin_, guardians, Watchers," he said to them by way of introduction, turning back to Araquiel. "Where are the others?"

"In the library," Araquiel said, gesturing at the doorway to the left. "We felt the breaking of the seal and have been searching for information on the Mothers."

"Where are the other tablets?" Cas asked as he followed the fallen through into a long hall.

"Hidden," Gadriel said shortly. "Safely, we hope."

"They will not remain hidden," Cas said. "Not if the demon who took over Hell understands that Lucifer's memories are implanted in the Throne."

"Lucifer knew nothing of where the tablets were hidden," Gadriel snapped at him.

"You don't know what Lucifer knew or did not know, Gadriel," Cas said reprovingly. "He had many spies throughout the world when he was locked away, and had many hiding places to take the things he discovered and stole." The angel shrugged. "And we must find those tablets before anyone else."

Dean saw the glance exchanged between the two Qaddiysh. They didn't look like they were all that inclined to help, he thought. He couldn't think of any way to compel their assistance either.

Araquiel stopped in front of a pair of enormous doors, beaten bronze and deeply embossed panels, depicting a pantheon of angels, wings outstretched. The Watcher pushed the doors open and walked inside.

The library made the one at Lebanon look like a second-hand bookstore, Dean thought as he followed Cas inside. The ceilings were fifty or sixty feet above them, galleries ringing the walls and the shelving extending from the graceful vault edges to the floor, all filled and packed and stuffed with books of every description, every age and type and size. Stacks protruded from the walls into the room, leaving only a long aisle in between the two sides, strewn with richly-coloured, soft rugs, and punctuated by low tables, surrounded by cushions and covered in books and parchments and writing paraphernalia. He heard Jasper's low whistle from beside him and silently agreed.

Around the tables, standing at the stacks, looking at the intrusion of angel and men, the Qaddiysh were dressed similarly to Araquiel and Gadriel, long robes of white, belted at the waist, long hair drawn back or loose, black and brown and blond and red. Their features were perfect, the eyes vivid in the darkly skinned or tanned faces, their curiosity remote and short-lived as they turned back to what they'd been doing.

"What information have you found?" Castiel stood uncomfortably beside one of the tables.

"That the sisters can be returned to their prison."

Cas turned around as a dark-skinned man with long, gleaming white hair approached them.

"Shamsiel," the angel said formally.

"Castiel, my brother," Shamsiel said, white teeth very bright as he grinned at Cas and enveloped him in a hug. "You really have spent too much time in Heaven."

"And you on earth," Cas said, stepping back and looking at him. "The look is very … striking."

Shamsiel shrugged slightly. "There's blending in … and then there's blending in. One wouldn't want to lose all of one's uniqueness."

"No, that would be a disaster," another of the Qaddiysh said dryly. "He's right, though, Castiel. The Mothers can be returned to the mountain."

"How?" Dean asked, looking from one to the other.

"Sit, we will eat and drink and talk," Shamsiel glanced at a tall woman standing by the stacks. She nodded and turned away as he dropped to the cushion on the floor. "You will repay our hospitality by being our guests."

Dean caught Cas' deep sigh as the angel flipped back his coat tail and sat cross-legged on a cushion by the table, turning and gesturing for them to do the same. The last time he'd sat at a table this low, he thought, had been in Lawrence. Surprisingly, the memory didn't bite. He didn't have time to examine that.

"God put the Mothers away," Cas said to the red-haired Qaddiysh who'd spoken in confirmation of Shamsiel's claim. "If there is another way, tell us now, Baraquiel."

"You are familiar with the legend of Pandora? The Greek myth?" Baraquiel asked, looked from the angel to the men.

"The source of the evils of the world, opened by Pandora who was sent to mankind in punishment for following Prometheus," Jasper said.

"Yes," the Qaddiysh smiled slightly. "The box, however is real. And it is a trap device for the forces of creation that you need to capture."

"Real – in what sense?" Sam asked curiously.

"It is a box, about so big," Baraquiel said, holding his hands eighteen inches apart. "If it is opened in the vicinity of the Mothers, they will be drawn into it and returned to their prison in the mountain. It will become a doorway, however, so care must be taken that it cannot be opened again."

"Drawn into it?" Dean said.

"Yes." Baraquiel looked up as the tall woman brought a platter of food and set it in front of him. She was followed by several others. Sam's eyes narrowed as he saw that they were not as perfect as the Watchers. He waited until they'd gone.

"You have humans working for you?" he asked Shamsiel, his gaze on the doorway where the woman and the others had gone.

The Qaddiysh smiled. "Human? No, not entirely."

"They are nephilim, Sam," Cas said, turning to look at him. "The children of the Qaddiysh."

"And human women," Jasper added, reaching out for a pomegranate on the tray in front of him.

Dean watched the angel beside him twitch with discomfort and decided to keep his questions till later.

"So, where do we find this box?" he asked Baraquiel.

"Unfortunately, there are three possible locations for it," Baraquiel said, putting a selection of the food onto a plate. "We haven't narrowed it down further than that yet."

"And what are the three?" Peter asked.

"The palace of Cleopatra is a possibility," Shamsiel said, around a mouthful of bread and cheese.

"The underwater palace?" Jasper asked, glancing sideways at Peter.

"Yes, that one," Shamsiel said with a shrug. "Much was taken from Greece and ended up in Egypt. We lost track of the box after Alexander returned."

"There is an alternative legend that the box was carried by the first eater in the night to Africa, buried there so that it could not trap the Dark Mother," Gadriel added, his gaze flicking across the men.

"In Zimbabwe?" Peter looked at him. "Nineteen thousand people vanished and the city that was left in ruins?"

"Yes," Araquiel nodded.

"What about the third possibility?" Dean asked. Underwater palaces and African ruins were sounding a long way past his pay grade.

"Derweze."

The voice of the speaker was deep. Dean turned to see a man emerging from between the shelves, as tall and broad-shouldered as the others, dressed in the long white _tob_ belted at the hips with a leather sword-belt, the hilt double-handed and dark with sweat. His face was perfect, high cheekbones and sculpted jaw covered in smooth, lineless fair skin, his eyes long and narrow and the amber-gold of a wolf's.

"The door to Hell?" Jasper asked, respect for the speaker keeping the derision to just an edge to the words.

The Qaddiysh smiled crookedly, a disarmingly boyish smile at odds with the timeless beauty of his face, as he looked at the professor. "The village was used sporadically, the Teke are still – were then – mostly nomadic. Before the mining company began to drill, there was a building there that none would enter. It was a tomb, buried deep in the ground, under the hill," he said, folding himself gracefully into a sitting position at the table. "Inside the tomb were more stairs. And they led deeper, far deeper than the exploration company drilled. At the bottom of the stairs, where the rock seemed to melt and reform, there was – is – a crypt."

"One of the Morning Star's, Kokabiel?" Cas asked.

"Just so." The man inclined his head and picked a soft roll, spreading it thickly with the soft cheese. "In the crypt, the demons gathered many things for their lord."

Dean frowned. "What about the door to Hell?"

"The mining company drilled a hole and hit a gas pocket, a cavern. The rig fell in and the company thought they could burn off the gas. They drilled the hole in 1971. It is still burning," Kokabiel said, taking a bite from the roll. "The legends spread quickly that it was a gate to Hell."

"There is no gate there," Cas said firmly. "Just one of Lucifer's traps to build his hiding place so close to a gas cavern."

"And where is this?" Sam asked.

"In the middle of the Karakum Desert, Turkmenistan."

The hunters looked at each other. None of the possible locations was going to be feasible without the angel's help.

"So, what's the plan?" Dean looked around the table.

"From here, it will take us two or three months to get to Alexandria and Zimbabwe, a little less to reach Karakum," Kokabiel said, looking at Araquiel. The dark-haired Watcher nodded. "We will leave in the morning."

"Two or three months?" Dean looked at him. "We could all be dead in two or three months the way the monsters are increasing at home." He turned to the angel. "You could get us there in minutes –"

"I told you, I cannot, Dean," Cas said, looking down at the table. "The rebellion is very close to civil war and it was not just Lucifer that they were liaising with."

Gadriel stared at him. "Who else?"

"The Grigori," Cas admitted reluctantly, lifting his head to look at the Qaddiysh.

"No, they were destroyed," Gadriel said softly, disbelievingly. "I saw their bodies wash out to sea."

"Not all of them."

"How many survived?" Araquiel leaned across the table toward the angel, his eyes narrowed and dark.

"Twenty seven." Castiel sighed. "They are three groups now, one in Europe, in the mountains behind Italy. One in China. And there is a group in the United States, in Utah, we think, although they have been careful to keep their exact location hidden."

"The Grigori?" Sam asked.

"I thought that was another name for the Qaddiysh?" Jasper frowned. "A medieval name?"

"No, although it is what humanity calls the Others," Kokabiel said heavily. "They were Lucifer's followers in the battle between his rebels and the army of Heaven. They ran from the killing ground when they saw how it would go, when they saw what would happen to those who had stood up with the Lightbringer," he explained, his gestures vague and tired. "They fled to the east, across the deserts and settled in Persia for some time. When the Flood came, we saw many die. We thought – we believed – we wanted to believe – that it was all of them."

"So … they're like you?" Dean looked at him curiously. "Fallen angels?"

"We fell with our Grace intact, with the blessing and at the request of our Father," Araquiel corrected him tersely. "The rest – the Others – fell with Lucifer, made flesh and blood when they appeared on this plane. They do not have their Grace, but their wings were not shorn from them as Lucifer and his follower's were. They are still angels, of a sort."

"And they have their own children," Castiel added. "And have sought and gained the support of at least some of the cambion."

Dean saw the shock on the faces of the men that sat at the table, not really men, but still flesh and blood and bone. He wasn't sure he wanted to know what had caused it.

"The cambion were all but extinct!" Peter exclaimed, his face as pale and rigid as those of the Qaddiysh.

"Not any more," Castiel said. "It was something that Lucifer attended to while the virus spread and overtook humanity, sending out demons in the constructs and compatible vessels to achieve his goals."

"What are the cambion?" Sam asked, looking from the hunter to the angel.

"They are the offspring of the union between a human woman and a demon, in mythology," Jasper answered him slowly. "Like the nephilim, their power is greater than the demon that spawned them."

"Half-breeds, everywhere," Dean muttered to himself. "Well, that's just fucking perfect."

"The power of the hybrids is the greatest when they are young," Baraquiel said. "It is predicated on belief. A child believes in everything. By the time they reach adulthood, they believe in much less and the power likewise declines."

"What about the tablets?" Dean shunted the thoughts of hybrids and power greater than angels to one side. "Can we get them?"

"They are safer where they are," Araquiel said, looking at him directly. "Only three of us know their locations and none know all."

"That doesn't sound safe," Peter argued. "You are mortal. You can be found. Tortured."

"The Keepers are as safe here as they would be in Heaven," Gadriel said sharply.

Dean glanced at Cas' face. From his expression, he didn't find that reassuring.

* * *

"I won't return with you to the United States, Dean," Peter said quietly in the black shadow beside the canyon wall. "I will go to the Vatican, attempt to meet Elena and her team there and retrieve the documents we need."

Dean shook his head. "How the fuck are you going to get there – from here?"

"It is not far to the coast, there will be boats still, and it will take only a few days to reach the mouth of the Roman river and travel up to the city."

"On your own? No, goddammit, we need you in this fight," Dean argued.

"I could go with him," Sam suggested.

"No!" Both men turned to him, the vehement response delivered in unison. Peter shook his head.

"I have hunted alone for many years, and I am still skilled at keeping out of sight. By boat the trip will be safe – safer – than by land, and quicker."

Dean looked at him. "What happens if by whatever miracle you make it and meet them there?"

"I can help take the texts back to Lourdes," Peter said. "And I can meet the Qaddiysh, guide them to the United States, bring them to Kansas with the box."

"In what – three months? Four or five by that time?" Dean looked at the ground. "Better hope there's still someone alive to hand it over to."

"Nothing will happen that fast," Peter said, hoping that was true. The vampire nest, the skinwalker pack, they had been large already but they didn't know exactly when the tablet had been broken. "The firstborn children of the Dark Mother are still imprisoned. It will take her time to free them."

Sam looked at his brother. "He's right, and Rufus and Maurice and the others have been looking for survivors, the less left around, the less they can turn."

Dean rubbed a hand over his face, feeling the last seventy-two hours drop onto him. "Alright. When you get back to the chapter house, let us know."

"Are you ready?"

They turned at Castiel's voice behind them. Jasper stood with the angel, an armload of books held tightly against his chest.

"Nephilim, Cas? Half-breed demons and angels and Pandora's box?" Dean looked at the angel. "Couldn't have given us a bit of warning about this?"

Cas looked at him. "It wasn't relevant before, Dean."

"Well, it's fucking relevant now!" he snapped back. "How are we supposed to deal with these things in the middle of everything else?"

"At the moment the Grigori are negotiating with the rebels," Cas said tightly. "The moment anything changes, I will let you know."

He reached out and Peter stepped back as the angel touched the men and they vanished, the sound of beating wings loud in the close confines of the canyon walls. He looked up at the sky and turned, heading north along the loose sand of the ravine's floor.

* * *

_**West Keep, Lebanon**_

They opened their eyes to the warmth of the Indian summer air, on the lookout tower. Dean spun around as the angel vanished.

"Cas! Dammit!" he said, looking around and scowling. "Just a few fucking questions!"

"Come on," Sam said, pulling off his coat as he started down the stairs, Jasper following him. Giving up on the hope that angel might return, Dean turned for the narrow door and closed it behind him.

"How is it even possible for an angel or a demon to have a kid with a human woman?" he asked Jasper as they reached the keep's library. "I mean, angels – junkless, right? And demons are just smoke."

Sam poured an inch of whiskey into three glasses, nodding as he handed them to his brother and Jasper. "And in a vessel, wouldn't it be the vessel's DNA that got passed along, not the angel or demon's?"

Jasper chuckled softly. "I'm flattered that you think my knowledge is so vast that it encompasses this."

"You don't know?" Dean asked, disappointed.

"Well, I can tell you the mythology of it, but I think your friend is the only one who could probably explain whatever science there is behind it."

"We'll take what you've got, prof," Sam said, sitting down at the table. "This is the first we've heard of it."

"The legends of the nephilim have been around for more than two thousand years. They were written in the texts long before the Flood," he said, sitting opposite them and looking into his glass. "They were variously known, as giants, as a long-lived race of perfect men, as demons, as angels, both evil and good, depending on whose version you read."

He looked up at them. "The Watchers we met, they Fell as they explained, with their Grace. Their bodies are real – flesh and blood and bone and nerve – those are not vessels. When they fell to earth they formed the bodies we see from the air, from the soil, from the rock and tree and sunlight – energy, gentleman, the same energy that exists in everything, vibrating faster or slower."

Sam nodded encouragingly. "Sure."

"Their biology is not the same as human biology; they have extra chromosomes, six pairs, on the strand. They are, however compatible enough to be able to interbreed, and three pairs of the chromosomes are passed along from the genetic material of the father to the offspring."

"For mythology, this is sounding pretty scientific?" Dean looked at him, brows raised.

Jasper smiled slightly. "It's just speculation." He sipped at the whiskey. "In the case of the demons, it's more complicated. They do use the vessel, not a construct in the way an angel can – they are merely souls, once human, twisted and distorted and mangled, but nonetheless just souls. But they can permeate every cell in their possession as an angel can when invited into a vessel with its consent. And the permeation of the demon's essence, at a cellular level, enables certain changes."

"Like what?"

"Like the power of two souls residing in the same flesh," Jasper said. "Like the ability to unlock those parts of the brain that humankind has not used for a millennia. Psychic power." He looked up as Dean's gaze met Sam's. "Yes, as the blood Azazel fed you as an infant unlocked those gifts in you."

Dean's attention sharpened on his brother as he realised that Sam must've told the old man about it. Sam shrugged.

"At a cellular level, things can be changed," Jasper continued. "Changed permanently. The abilities you developed, that the other children developed, they were never demonic in and of themselves, you understand. Every human being has the capability, to a greater or lesser degree, where the brain meets the mind."

"Say again?" Dean asked shortly.

"Our brains and minds are quite separate," Jasper said, the whiskey slopping around the glass as he waved it for emphasis. "Like the hardware and software of a computer, one is designed to run down, burn out, holding memories and knowledge for so long and no longer. It is a redundancy system for the mind, which holds everything including the control over the brain and the body."

"What exactly was your specialty in that fancy college?" Dean looked at him uncertainly.

Jasper laughed. "The mind is what lives on. With the soul, the mind is what carries on, after death has turned our bodies to dust, the mind keeps going."

For a moment, Dean felt the searing heat and raw agony of the pit, in his nerves and skin and muscles. He'd been a soul, with no body, no flesh to be carved. But the demons had carved anyway, every detail of his body remembered and no possibility of escaping the pain that lived in the memories, that could not overload as a physical body did when pain became too much to bear, that simply had to endure no matter what happened. He closed his eyes and shunted the memory back down, into the depths, dragging in a breath.

"Yeah, alright," he said unsteadily. "So demons can change the body enough to pass on … whatever it is they pass on to a human child?"

Jasper nodded, keeping his gaze on the table in front of him. Sam had told him a little of his life, wanting his opinion of certain aspects on what had happened to him. He'd told him of his brother's sacrifice. And briefly, what that had entailed.

"And that is the cambion," Jasper said, swirling the last of the amber liquid around in his glass and tossing it back. "Baraquiel was quite correct. In both cases, the most power of either hybrid is in the childhood years. Once adulthood is reached, the ability to believe has diminished and they are, perhaps somewhere between the power of a man and the power of their fathers. There is only way to kill them."

"That being?" Dean asked, glad the conversation had moved to solid ground again.

"The heart has to be cut out." Jasper said tiredly. "They will survive anything else, even decapitation unless the heart is removed from the body and burned."

* * *

_**Corsica, Mediterranean Sea**_

The boat rolled slowly from side to side, the engines chugging deep below, their reverberations felt through the steel hull. Elena looked up at the sky, eyes narrowing as she took in the line of blackness that lay to the east. They were only a few hours from the mouth of the Tiber, they should reach the coast before the mistral came upon them, she thought.

"Like a holiday," Isabeau said from beside and she turned to smile at the younger woman, her long, pale blonde hair blowing in the light breeze.

"Not for much longer," Elena said, turning back to the rail. "We will prepare everything tonight, go up the river at midnight."

"Did you try the radio, mam'selle?"

"It was fried. The wiring was gone," Elena said, turning to look at her. "Jean will know you are alright."

Isabeau smiled slightly. "P'raps. I will put it out of my head before we start."

"Can you tell Marc to start preparing our gear – and Francois needs to have everything we're not taking packed away. I do not know how many of the documents we will be bringing with us, but it will be as many as we can."

"_Oui_, mam'selle."

She stopped a few steps from the older woman. "Who is staying aboard?"

"Luc," Elena said absently, running a hand through her short, dark hair. "If we need to get out in a hurry, he's the only one who can get this tub going fast."

And it was entirely likely that they would be chased with their load of knowledge, she thought. The Vatican's vaults had held – did hold – a store of treasures that most had no idea of. Some would know, would be waiting for a party like themselves, with the correct keys and incantations to let them in. They would have to be careful. And fast.

* * *

_**Redwood Falls, Minnesota**_

Maurice glanced at Rona as they drove slowly up to the barricade in front of the long high-school building.

"Devil's trap," she remarked, looking at the road in front of them.

"Yeah, someone here knows what they're up against."

Behind the piles of rusty and bent-up vehicles that had been stacked on top of each of other to form a wall around the building and across the road, he could see movement.

"HALT!"

The voice, loud and strident in the clear morning air, came from a megaphone, he thought, tapping the brake. Three blocks behind them, Lee and Danielle were keeping out of sight in the truck.

"GET OUT OF THE CAR."

"Not a good idea," Rona said softly, her fingers curled around the shotgun in her lap.

"Only game in town," Maurice shrugged and turned the key, the engine stopping. He had an automatic in a pancake holster in the small of his back, under his jacket and he left the assault rifle on the seat beside him, opening the door and sliding out, keeping his hands in view.

He heard the clunk of the passenger door as Rona did the same.

"What do you want?" The volume of the voice dropped, and Maurice realised it was a woman's voice, harsh with nerves.

"We're looking for survivors," he called out, gaze scanning along the makeshift wall.

"Why?"

He turned as the woman let the megaphone drop, and he saw her, standing behind one of the vehicles. She was small and thin, dark, curly hair cut short and framing a face that was slightly hollowed out with hunger and tension.

"I'm Maurice, that's Rona," he said, looking at her. "We've got a place, in Kansas, a lot of us there, farming – we're looking for people who might not be surviving so well on their own," he explained awkwardly.

"We've heard that before," she said coldly. "Before being marched into a slave camp."

"We're not demons," Rona said from the other side of the pickup. "Just trying to help."

"We're fine, thanks," the woman said, glancing at her and back to Maurice. "You can be on your way."

"You don't look fine," Maurice countered gently. "You look hungry. And tired."

"We can take care of ourselves," a man's voice said loudly. He came out from behind the wreckage to stand beside the woman, staring at them belligerently. "And anyone else who comes along."

He lifted the gun in his hands and waved it, and from behind them, down the street, Maurice heard voices and footsteps. He sighed. He should've left Lee and Danielle out of town completely, but it was hard to predict what they'd find.

"The demon problem isn't the only thing you've got to worry about," Maurice said, looking at the woman. "There're other things that are going to come after you – things you've only seen in horror movies and your worst nightmares."

Her eyes narrowed at him. "Like what?"

"Like vampires, and werewolf and shapeshifters and everything you didn't think existed!" Rona snapped at her. "You're in danger and you can't protect yourselves!"

"How do you know about the monsters?"

"Before the virus, that's what we did, mostly. We're hunters," Maurice said, looking at her thoughtfully. She hadn't scoffed at Roma's assertion.

"Hunters?" she asked. "You've read the books?"

"What books?"

"If you're hunters, how do you kill a wendigo?" she asked suddenly.

Maurice glanced at Rona in surprise, then back to the woman. "With fire."

"And a wraith?"

"Silver."

"Tilly, just because they –" the man beside her started to say.

"Test them," Tilly cut him off. "Salt, iron, silver, holy water and the trap."

An engine started and Maurice watched a section of the wall move aside slowly. Two men and a woman came out through the narrow gap, holding a bags and bottles and knives.

He stepped forward, rolling up his sleeve.

* * *

Maurice looked around the wide space. The auditorium for the school had been modified into a hall, filled with tables and chairs, the bleachers used as shelving, a fire burning at one end, warming the interior fitfully. Tilly had told them there were ninety people here, their ages ranging from an eighty-six year old woman down to a four-month old baby. Looking at them, seated at the tables or gathered around the makeshift hearth, he thought that none of them looked particularly well. Malnutrition, lack of exercise, fear and anxiety, all had lent a grey tint to their skin, all had brought the bones underneath into sharp relief.

"But I don't understand, if you haven't read the books, how did you know about this stuff?" she asked again.

"Can I see one of the books?" he asked, turning back to her. After a moment's thought, she nodded, getting up and going out. She came back a few minutes later, a battered and much-taped paperback in one hand. He looked at the grimed and creased cover as he took it from her.

_Supernatural_, by Carver Edlund. He opened it, eyes widening as he reading the character names, and looked up at her.

"How many of these are there?"

"Um … twenty four," she said. "They saved our lives."

"Uh-huh."

"But you haven't read them," she said flatly, watching him read down the page.

"No, but these are … uh … probably based on real events, you know," he prevaricated fast, wondering how the hell these had been written. "Maybe some hunter talked to the author."

"Yeah, I guess."

He debated internally on the question of telling her about the Winchesters, real men, not just two-dimensional characters in a bunch of cheap paperbacks, finally deciding against. It would be easier once these people had met them, seen the keeps in Kansas, become a part of their ever-growing population.

"The situation is getting worse, Tilly," he said instead. "We've had information that the monster populations are starting to expand and you're going to get hit here harder and harder."

She looked up at him. "Is your – place – any safer?"

"A lot," he confirmed. "And we're growing food. We need people. You need us."

"It's a long way to Kansas," she said, her teeth catching her lip as she looked absently around the hall. "A long way for these people without protection."

"You've got vehicles?"

"Not many," she admitted. "We can't find the replacement tyres and electrics we need to get the intact ones going."

He nodded. "We can help with that."

She was uneasy about the thought of leaving what had kept them alive, kept them together, he could see. He couldn't describe what they would be going to – not in the kind of detail that would make it seem like a worthwhile trade. And he couldn't tell her that the road to Kansas was not going to be dangerous. That would've been a lie. But they couldn't stay here. They'd die of starvation, being picked off as the creatures of Nintu got stronger and stronger.

She looked at him for a long moment. "I'll put it to a vote this evening," she told him. "It's their lives. They decide."

He hoped that they'd be able to look past the present and to the future then. Because nothing was going to get any better, staying here.

* * *

_**November 2012, Lebanon, Kansas**_

The long building had been the expensive folly of a Wall Street farmer who'd decided that his outbuildings would have timber floors, to save the legs of his prize-winning animals. Dean doubted that any animal had ever been in there, but it was an excellent place for training, the hardwood boards having enough give and flex to be kind to joints, but punishing enough to fall on.

He watched the group in front of him, eyes narrowed in concentration as they sparred in twos at one end of the building. At twelve, Ben was the youngest. Every child had the same training, rotating through the hunters and soldiers living in the keep, learning first self-defensive moves, gun cleaning, packing shells, magazines, honing a blade without destroying the temper of the steel, the sigils and wards and guards of protection, the characteristics, weaknesses and strengths of what was out there and how to counter them. The training would've made him uneasy if it hadn't been so necessary, he thought, watching Ben twist aside and ride Alan's barely-pulled blow, drop to his knees and spring back up, the sound of his taped hand hitting the padding loud in the empty space. It was necessary.

"Alan," he called out, walking onto the floor between the two boys. "How'd Ben know what you were going to do?"

The thirteen-year old dropped his gaze to the floor, thick, blond hair flopping over his forehead. "Telegraphed it."

"Right," Dean said, glancing at Ben. "Where was your weight?"

"Left foot," Alan said with a sigh.

"Where should it've been?"

"Right foot."

"Start again, this time use your head."

He nodded and looked at Ben, both boys dropping into the slight crouch and circling each other.

The apocalypse had brought them a lot of orphans. All of them had found a home, families who'd lost children who'd reached out to them. They were fed and cared for, but it didn't stop the pain of the losses they'd suffered. He'd been careful to instil a respect for what they did into their lives, and somewhat hypocritically, he thought sometimes, a warning against the idea of revenge. It'd taken a long time to learn that revenge wasn't a goal worth pursuing.

His attention sharpened as Alan attacked again, this time in a flurry of action that hadn't been forewarned by an obvious position and he watched Ben retreat, blocking and using the blows that came at him. Both boys were fairly evenly matched, and he could see the influences of Franklin and Vince, Rona and Maurice and Boze's offsider, Sean, in their movements. All the hunters used fairly standard attack and defence styles. He'd have to think of a way to make that more difficult, because none of the monsters he'd ever fought had followed the same techniques and much of the way he'd learned to fight had been taught by the creatures themselves.

"Okay, better," he said, when they'd reached an impasse. They straightened up and turned to look at him.

"Alan, you going out with Rona today?"

The boy nodded, crossing the floor and heading for the door. "See you later, Ben!"

"Yeah," Ben said, walking over to Dean, a frown creasing his forehead. "I'll be thirteen in May, Dean."

"Yep, and until then you're not going," Dean said easily, the conversation a familiar one.

"I'm just as good as the others," Ben insisted, turning with the hunter to walk out.

"Better," Dean agreed. "In most stuff."

"Then why can't I go out on the perimeter runs?"

"Not thirteen yet."

"Why does that matter?" Ben stopped and looked at him in frustration.

"Because it's the way we're doing it," Dean said, looking back at him. "And that's the end of it."

Ben made a face and caught up. "It's not logical."

"Too bad," Dean said, hiding a grin. "Besides, I need your help right now."

Ben's head lifted sharply as he looked at him. "Really?"

"Yeah, really," Dean said, gesturing to the keep walls. "Go tell Maureen you'll be late back, I'll meet you at the gate."

He watched the boy race away. He'd wondered if he should've moved Ben in with them when they got here, but he wasn't around all that much and Bobby'd pointed out that it would be better for Ben to have a family who was there all the time. He still wasn't sure if it'd been the right decision, but he had to admit that Ben was content enough with the family who'd taken him in, survivors of Las Vegas, with three other orphans and two children of their own. The combination of a stable family life and the time he could spend with the boy seemed to be working out alright.

Walking up to the keep, he remembered abruptly that they would be heading to Michigan in the morning. He thought Ben would want to come along to that as well. There was a small part of him that was unwilling to get too close to Ben. It didn't seem to matter that between them, the relationship that was slowly developing was honest and okay. It was never be okay, what he'd done, no matter that he'd had to do it, not for him, and he suspected, not for the boy whose mother he'd killed. And spending time with him kept those memories from sinking, kept them alive.

* * *

_**Camp Tawas, East Lake Tawas, Michigan**_

The camp had grown, Alex thought, looking around as they waited for Boze and Renee to come out of the chapel. They had a lot more people here now, and the buildings had been extended and raised in every direction, crowded tightly against the palisade walls, the damage from the air strike repaired so that she couldn't tell which buildings had been hit, and which had not.

Through the long drive from Kansas to the northern state, she'd been unable to take her eyes off the countryside on the way, Dean had skirted the larger cities, but even from a distance she could see that the buildings were collapsing, trees and fields and growth breaking up the roads, the foundations. It wouldn't take very long before they vanished altogether, she'd thought. Everywhere, the rampant growth of vegetation had been astonishing, the regions that had once been tamed and cultivated fields and towns and farms gone beneath newly growing forest and stretches of high grain grasses. And they'd seen more animals along the way, deer and goats and cattle gone wild, heads lifting sharply as the car had growled past, dropping again to feast on the plentiful pastures.

Negotiating the highways, Dean'd remarked that they were going to have to think about repairing the roads, at least the direct route between Kansas and Michigan, or they'd be forced to revert to horseback travel to get through. Even now, the roads were cracked and humped, grass spreading from the verges along the fissures to the centres. She'd agreed with him, wondering if there were enough people to make that a feasible option. Something to talk over with Boze, in any case.

Her attention was dragged back to the present as the newly-wed couple emerged through the doors, showered with rice and confetti. Following Dean and Ben as they walked after the couple toward the main hall, she wondered if Renee's hope of a few peaceful months would come about.

"Weddings not your thing?"

She turned to see Rufus beside her, smiling slightly but his dark eyes thoughtful as he looked at her. She shook her head, brushing off the concern she could feel from him.

"Just hoping Renee gets enough honeymoon time before anything happens," she said with a sigh.

"Probably not," the hunter said cheerfully. "Not that that's anything new."

He took her arm as the press of the crowd got closer. "What'd you think of the country on the way here?"

"I think that the Mother Goddess has been walking fast," she said, nose wrinkling up. "Even after the rains, it wasn't growing as fast as it is now."

"Yeah, kind of thought myself," Rufus agreed. "Kim and Ray have noticed another anomaly."

"What?"

"You should probably talk to them," Rufus hedged as they walked into the hall. "Asked me to find you."

"This is going to spoil my enjoyment in the rest of the day, isn't it?"

He looked down at her, mouth lifting on one side. "Hard to say, I'm not sure it's bad news exactly."

She frowned at him as he edged them both to the side of the hall and walked down past the tables toward the low dais set at the front. Kim and Ray stood together with Merrin and Bernice and two others she didn't know.

"Alex, this is Bob Malley, he's a doctor from Austin," Kim said, as Alex extended her hand to the tall, thin, grey-haired man standing next to Merrin. "And Meredith Forsythe, Obstetrics from Atlanta."

The woman was tall and thin, carrot-red hair cut short around a square, uncompromising face, in her late forties, Alex guessed, and had been at the top of her tree judging by the confidence in her face and the short, hard shake she got from her.

Looking at their faces, she could see that all of them were worried about something. "What's the problem?"

Kim glanced at Meredith, who shrugged. "Not sure it's a problem, exactly," she said slowly. "Over the last two weeks, we've all had a lot of people – women – coming in for tests."

"What kind of tests?" Alex asked, feeling her stomach drop.

"Pregnancy tests," Bob said, his long face worried. "And they've all been positive."

"Okay," she said, looking from him to Merrin. "How many are we talking about?"

"In Tawas, we've seen over five hundred women in the last two weeks," Bernice said sharply. "Lake West sent over another two hundred just last week."

Feeling her brows rising, Alex turned to Kim. "And in Lebanon?"

"More than six hundred over the past two weeks," Kim confirmed. "And I'm expecting more."

"You're expecting more?"

"The range has been across the board, Alex," Merrin cut in. "Every woman of child-bearing age and good health – from fifteen to forty-five and a few under and over – have tested positive."

She looked at her. "Are you talking immaculate conceptions here, or …"

"No," Bob said. "We weren't sure until we put all the cases together, and did some follow up on the women who weren't involved in a stable relationship, but all of them reported having some kind of sexual encounter between the last week of October and the first week of November and these are just the ones to notice early."

"It wasn't just the plant life," Rufus added, one brow lifted at her.

"Guess not," she said, looking distractedly around the hall. Of the six thousand odd people that were divided between the two communities, a little under half were women, and most were in their most fertile years. "If the conceptions are all around the same time, it's going to be chaos."

"Yes," Meredith said dryly. "We need to start training people now, midwives, nurses, assistants."

"And we should test everyone who fits the criteria, Alex," Kim said. "We can't leave it up to the women to notice first."

Alex dragged in a deep breath and nodded. "Yeah, okay. We'll get everyone organised for testing and Liev and Terry can figure out the best way to handle the maternity wards – and I'll go through the intakes again. How many can each of you handle for training?"

"As many as we need to," Merrin said firmly.

* * *

Dean looked around as Alex walked to the table and sat down beside him. "What happened to you?"

"Quick conference with our medics," she said, staring down at her plate. "Seems like Ninhursag has already been through our states."

"What do you mean?"

"Kim and the others just told me that we might be expecting somewhere in the vicinity of three thousand new arrivals in around nine months time," she told him dryly.

"What?"

"We need to get everyone together and figure out how we're going to deal with this."

"Slow down," he said, turning to stare at her. "There are three thousand pregnant women in the camps?"

"Maybe a little more or less, but yeah," she said. "Sometime between the end of October, and the beginning of November, the docs think."

"How?"

"Goddess of creativity, remember?" She shrugged and reached for a bread roll. "We saw the growth of the forests and fields on the way over, I'm guessing the animal populations are going to get a huge boost as well."

"But … three thousand?"

"Every woman they've tested has been positive. Everyone of child-bearing age and in good health has conceived, they think."

He leaned back in the chair. "Is it going to be an ongoing thing?"

"I'm not sure," she said. "It might be if she passes back through and we haven't managed to lock her up again. This is what she did, according to Jerome and Davis and Katherine – populated the earth."

"Doesn't it take two?"

"Apparently, that was a busy two or three weeks for the men available."

He looked at her, hearing the faintest edge to her voice. "You okay?"

"Just wondering where we're going to put the maternity wards," she said lightly, her gaze cutting away. "It's going to put something of a shorter time-frame on getting all the survivors we can find into safe places."

"Yeah," he agreed. There was something she wasn't saying, but he had the feeling she wouldn't talk about it now. Here. He exhaled softly.

"Is this a good thing or a bad thing?"

Alex shook her head. "Depends on how we handle it, I guess. Overall, for humanity, I guess it's a good thing."


	5. Chapter 5 On the Wings of Maybe

**Chapter 5 On the Wings of Maybe**

* * *

_**November 2012, Litteris Hominae, Kansas**_

Sam closed the book with a thud, aware of the priest watching him from the other end of the table.

"Whatever it is, just say it, would you?" he said irritably, sliding the next leather-bound tome across from the pile in front of him.

"I cannot decide if you are searching for answers – or doing penance, Sam," Father Emilio said, looking at the deep shadows under the younger man's eyes.

"Does it matter?" Sam asked, gesturing vaguely around the room.

"Of course," the priest said at once, as if the question was ridiculous. "You cannot serve two masters. If you are searching for answers, then look, with hope in your heart and a keen mind to see the patterns as they emerge." He smiled slightly at Sam's expression. "If you would do penance for your sins, then take it somewhere else, and do it properly – hair shirt, ashes, a small flagellum maybe?"

"There is nothing I can do that will ever pay for what happened, Father," Sam said tiredly. He knew the priest was right. Searching until he was too exhausted to see properly wasn't doing the job. And it didn't matter how much he tried to convince himself that he was paying for his choices, the knowledge of what'd he done, what he'd set into motion and failed to stop, lay as heavily on him now as it had when he'd wrestled control from the angel and forced him out.

"There is a payment for everything, Sam," Father Emilio said gently. "And it will only come when you are ready for it. In the meantime, you should focus on one job, and do that to the best of your abilities."

"I would pay anything right now to not feel the way I do," Sam snapped at him. "To not feel the – what I feel about my life."

"But you are not ready," the priest said. "You still argue with yourself over the choices you made, still seek out the justifications for what you did, what you thought. It is acceptance that you are searching for, Sam."

"Accepting that I did what I did because I was weak?"

"Accepting that you did what you did, and that's all," Father Emilio corrected him. "Accept it and understand it."

Sam opened the book in front of him, staring at the title page without seeing it. In the abstract, he understood what was expected of him. To acknowledge and accept, to take the responsibility without justification or rationalisation or excuse. To just see that it was a part of him. In actuality, however, he realised the priest was right. He wasn't close to that yet. The blood. The demon. The sacrifice and the pain that had followed it. The bitter despair of being unable to find a single thing that would save his brother, that would get him out of the flames and torture Dean had condemned himself to – to save his life. The knowledge that he couldn't bear the responsibility of that decision, the weight of it, couldn't live with it or the stark reminder that he'd been loved so desperately that Dean had thought that the trade was worth it.

"You are not the first to struggle with the consequences of your actions, Sam," Father Emilio continued quietly. "Perhaps you could find some help in the accounts of the struggles of others?"

He looked up at the priest and shook his head. "I don't think I can find comfort in the crappy decisions others have made before me, Father," he said tiredly. "I don't know where to start with learning to accept all of this."

"What is the thing you most regret?"

"You mean aside from breaking the last seal on Lucifer's cage and freeing him into this world, and then giving him the vessel he needed to begin his plans of complete genocide of humanity?" Sam asked, his voice bright with sarcasm.

"Yes, not the things that threatened the world, just the thing that you cannot find your way past because it was personal to you, because it meant the most to you," the priest told him, his tone mild.

"Pride," Sam said slowly. "Thinking I knew what I was doing and not listening – believing that I knew better – than the people who – cared about me."

"Then start with that," Father Emilio suggested, getting up from the table and tucking several books under his arm. "It is in the things that have wounded closest to our hearts that we can find the way to the rest."

He turned and walked away, heading out of the library and down the hall. Sam watched him go, then looked at his watch. Two a.m. He should give it up for the night, he thought. Get some sleep and try again in the morning. Later in the morning. He closed the book and picked up the ones he'd already covered, moving slowly through the stacks to return them to their places.

There was no way to undo the mistakes he'd made. He'd joined with Ruby in the blackest despair, amidst a certainty that Dean had sacrificed himself for nothing, feeling as if revenge was the only possible course that held any meaning for him. There was no way he could find to get into Hell. And no way to rescue a soul from the pit, even if he could find a way in.

It'd taken Dean a while to figure out what their father had done for him, and the guilt had almost killed him when he'd put the pieces together and realised where John Winchester was, and what was happening to him. It had crushed the framework that his brother had lived by, the love that had been the core of his life, under the weight of that burden, and yet he'd done the same thing without a qualm for Sam, knowing how it would feel.

He did the only thing he could, Sam told himself. The same as their father had done the only he could in the face of losing the son he loved. The fact that they'd both chosen to sacrifice themselves for the people they'd loved the most hadn't been lost on Sam. The fact that he would have not made the same choice, in the same circumstances, hadn't been lost on him either. He'd tried to make a deal, a straight swap for Dean's soul and had been refused, not just once but countless times. Each time had reinforced the idea that he was not made of the same stuff as his father and brother.

Bobby had told him, in a long, rambling, drunken conversation when the two of them had been alone in the junkyard one evening, what Dean'd said to the old man when he'd brought Sam back from Cold Oak and Bobby had realised what he'd done. At the time, he'd thought he'd understood what the hunter had been telling him, had thought he'd understood what Dean had felt and why he'd made the deal. He hadn't. And he hadn't realised that until he'd stood in Atlanta, the angel inside his body forcing him to stare across a bleak and barren landscape, to see a world without hope. It just hadn't occurred to him before that his brother had only seen one role for himself, in all the years of growing up together. And having failed that, couldn't see a life that could mean anything.

He was still the protector, Sam thought now, walking up the stairs. Now that protectorate had expanded to include every survivor, but he was still struggling under a weight of responsibility that didn't include whatever dreams he might've had, whatever hopes he might've held for himself.

* * *

_**Tiber River, Italy**_

Elena looked across the inky river, moving the scull slowly enough to avoid a splash. Behind her, another of the long, narrow-hulled boats moved steadily upstream, both barely visible shadows as they slipped under the bridges and past the ruins.

Michel's scopes flashed silently within the deep, black canvas bags on the floorboards of the boats, Marc's face lit by the dim red light. Thermal imaging would give them warning of anything radiating heat within two hundred yards. The movement detector had less range but greater accuracy, keyed to micro-changes in air density. It would give them some warning of an approach inside the buildings.

"Here," Isabeau's voice breathed in her ear, the sub-vocalisation just audible through the earpiece. "Just past this bridge. Eight hundred feet to the piazza."

The boats drew in close to the stone-walled banks of the river and they tied the lines to the iron rings set into the walls, climbing to the road above. Isabeau gestured to the street opposite and Elena nodded, moving across the open ground and gaining the black shadows under the buildings that lined the other side. Three hundred feet to the Borgo Santo Spirito, which would lead them straight to the Piazza Saint Pietro, and into the Basilica. Flicking the lights off on the detectors, she slid the earpiece for the movement detector into one ear, checking as Marc did the same for the infrared. They moved along the dark street in single file, soft-soled shoes making almost no sound on the pavements.

The vaults and catacombs under the city were extensive, but Maria had explained that the libraries they wanted were limited to the lowest levels under the Basilica and the Sistine Chapel. The entrance was through the easily accessible cave gates. The passages from the caves to the deepest levels had been locked and guarded with a series of hidden doors. They would be the hardest to get through.

They had bags packed within the bags they carried, but she still wasn't sure how they were going to retrieve all the texts they would need. The only two hunters who'd seen those documents were thousands of miles away. The city had been overrun several times now since the release of the virus, and Maria had told them that none of the other Vatican hunters had survived. Peter was in the United States. The hunters she had with her were battle-hardened and experienced, but they were only five and she would not risk losing any one of them to whatever had been living in the ruins of Rome for the last three years.

* * *

_**Blue Earth, Minnesota**_

Maurice nodded to Danielle, gesturing ahead. Only a few buildings were still intact in the small town, the forests had reached around the edges, tall enough now to block out the sunshine on what remained of the roads.

Moving in pairs, Maurice and Rona led the small group into the town square, stopping opposite the church that sat on one corner. The hunter looked at the doors of the building, frowning as he saw the deep rips through the wood.

"Anyone here?"

There was a rattle of bolts behind the door and it cracked open an inch or two, the long barrel of a rifle emerging, pointed at them, over that a sliver of a man's face, one bright hazel eye under a dark brow.

"Get back."

Maurice glanced at Rona, nodding as he lifted his hands and backed away. "We're friendlies."

"Yeah."

The door opened a little wider and the man stepped out. Over six feet, with dark brown hair to his shoulders and a dark beard, threaded with silver, he kept the barrel pointed at Maurice as his eyes scanned over the others.

"What do you want?" he asked, his voice tired and rough with tension.

"Want to find survivors," Maurice said, gesturing behind him. "We got a place in Kansas, growing food and we're looking for people who need help."

"Funny," the man said coldly. "That's what the demons told us before we got chained together and dragged to Billings."

"We're not demons," Maurice said quietly, wondering if all the small groups they found were going to have the same story to tell. Billings was a new one, but maybe they'd been on their way to Vegas.

"You'll have to do better than that."

"You got holy water in that church?" Maurice gestured to the building. "It'll burn a demon or a human being possessed."

The man's eyes narrowed at him. "We do." He stepped back to the doorway, quarter-turning his head. "Alison, dip a cup into the font and bring it out."

"How many of you are there?"

"Not as many as there were before the wolves started showing up," the man said, reaching back without looking as a slender woman passed him a cup.

"Wolves?" Maurice hesitated. "Animals?"

"What else could they be?" The man stepped forward and held out the cup. "Drink."

The hunter walked to the steps and reached for the cup, swallowing a mouthful. He turned as Rona walked up to him, handing her the cup and she tipped it up, her throat working as she drank the remaining water.

"We're not demons," Maurice said. "These wolves, they only come at night? On the full moon?" he asked, looking at the riven wood. Too deep for animal claws, or at least the sort of animals Minnesota had been home to, once upon a time.

"How'd you know that?"

"Lucky guess," Maurice said distractedly. "How many have you heard?"

The moon had begun waning two nights ago. Would they have enough time to get these people out of here, he wondered?

"There were eight, the first night," Alison stepped into the doorway, and the man moved back a step, covering her automatically. She looked past him. "Then twelve on the next night."

He felt Rona's eyes flick to him. "You lost some folks that first night?"

"Yes, six people were killed." Alison moved past the man, to stand beside him. "Four more were injured. They disappeared the next day."

"Alison," the man's voice held a warning and she looked at him impatiently.

"Drew, what does it matter if they know?" she said sharply, turning back to Maurice. "Those four were bitten."

Maurice nodded slowly. "And they're not dead, but they will have to be killed."

"You're joking," Drew said, his face drawing into a scowl. "They were good men –"

Rona shrugged. "And now they're werewolves."

Drew flashed a derisory look at her. "Werewolves."

"We've got another three weeks to get out of here before they come again –"

Alison shook her head. "No, they're not just attacking on the full moon anymore," she said, looking at the church doors. "They did that last night. They've been coming for over a week now."

_Well, that changed things_, Maurice thought darkly. "This your only shelter?"

Drew nodded reluctantly. "There's a concrete building," he said, pointing out of the square along the street. "That's still intact but it's too big for us to defend."

"Yeah, well, we've ninety people here with us, and we'll need more space," he said tersely, looking up at the other man. "You can stick with us, or stay here, but if they're coming every night, then everyone'll be safer if we're all together."

"He's right," Alison murmured to Drew, looking at the guns the hunters carried.

"How's it possible?" Drew asked, staring at the man in front of him. "Werewolves."

"You've seen them." It wasn't a question and Drew nodded unwillingly.

"Just takes a bite," Rona said quietly. "But they've been around the whole time, just not in numbers like this, and usually they hunt on their own, solitary."

"But not now?" Alison looked at her.

"Apparently not," Maurice answered, turning around and lifting his arm in a wide swing. Beyond the screening forest, the vehicles drove slowly into the square.

* * *

_**Lightning Oak Keep, Kansas**_

"Bobby," Doug said, looking up from the radio as Bobby walked past. "Got something – Maurice."

Bobby looked down at the radio and picked up the mike. "Maurice? Where the hell are you?"

"Blue Earth," the hunter's voice came back loud and reasonably clear, a brief crackle of static over it. "Need you to let everyone know about the werewolves."

Bobby closed his eyes. "What about the werewolves?"

"Not hunting on the full moon anymore, for starters," Maurice said shortly. "And they're hunting in packs."

"You know, I've had just about as much good news as I can stand," Bobby said, staring at the radio.

"Yeah, I hear you."

"You found anyone?"

"Yeah, we'll try and take down this pack tonight, get on the road tomorrow. We'll bring about a hundred and fifty back, if we don't find any more."

_And if you don't lose any of them_, Bobby thought. "You need some backup?"

"Not for this," Maurice said. "I'll let you know tomorrow."

"Roger, out."

"Out."

He handed the mike back to Doug and turned around, heading for the offices behind the store-rooms. Ellen needed to know about this and he'd head over and see Dean straight after.

* * *

_**Chamberlain, South Dakota**_

Mist obscured the river from the western bank, swirling in the fickle breeze, thickening and thinning as the dawn light played with shadows and shapes that appeared and disappeared.

Rufus stared at the pylons of the bridge morosely. They would be exposed along the road the whole way across. And he didn't like the stillness of the woods. A lot of wildlife had returned in the last six months and he should've been able to hear some of it. But the bank was silent, and the river, and as far as he could tell the opposite side, where the remains of the town were invisible beyond the mist, as well.

Beside him, Jack was crouched silently. Further along the bank, Christine, Elias, Herb and Winifred were waiting for him to make up his mind.

He lifted his arm and dropped it, rising from the crouch and feeling like he'd just made a mistake. How big that mistake would turn out to be remained to be seen, he thought sourly.

Herb and Winifred remained with the civilians, packed in a tight bunch in the vehicles they'd been able to salvage, within the treeline. Jack, Christine and Elias followed Rufus along the bank and onto the gravelled approach to the bridge, moving silently and in single file across the open spans. The river was wide next to the town, the span of the bridge and the partially banked interstate beside it almost a mile in length, and aside from the almost inaudible chuckle of the water around the concrete and steel pylons, they walked through a wall of fog and silence, water condensing on their hair and clothes and weapons, dripping slowly.

Swearing inwardly, Rufus saw the mists thickening on the town side as they approached. He'd been reading nothing but vampire lore since he'd gotten back from Amarillo, and in the oldest writings, there'd been a series of accounts from some dark age hunters about the ability of the old vampires to create illusion, to thicken mist and separate travellers. He glanced back and made a sharp gesture, the hunters closing up closer behind him as they walked past the first of the buildings patchily visible from the road.

Jack looked at it, lifting a brow. Rufus shook his head. Even from here, the torn out siding was visible, showing sharp-edged patches of darkness against the pale steel sheets. Something had been through here. They didn't really want to find out what.

His foreboding increased as he saw the boneyard to the right. Most of it was obscured by the low, ground-clinging fog, but ghouls invariably started out with the dead and worked their up to living flesh. It didn't look like a big one, or an old one, and that was something.

High school or hospital, he wondered, standing at the crossroads. Both were big enough to take a few survivors, built of brick and likely to have remained mostly intact and he could just make out their shapes through the unnatural gloom. The high school was closer; the hospital divided up into a number of smaller buildings.

A scream, muffled and distorted by the mist, was shocking in its raw suddenness, and the hunters froze, eyes flicking from side to side in an effort to pinpoint the location. The automatic gunfire that followed was not ambiguous, a fusillade from the left.

"High school!" Rufus hissed, swinging an arm wide and over. They crossed the road and the dried grass of the front gardens and lawns, moving at a fast run. None of them saw the figures as they emerged from the shadows around the square front of the building, Christine going down first, her gun flying over the grass as the pale-skinned creature sank its teeth into the back of her shoulder.

Elias swung his long-bladed machete and the head flew off to bounce against the school's steps. The concerted whisper of steel drawn from leather was unheard over the firing from the side of the building, Jack and Elias standing back to back over the trainee as Rufus ran for the doors, swinging around at the last minute to duck and swing, barely catching a glimpse of vivid blue eyes and long teeth before the head was gone into the mist. He thumped on the door with one fist, staring over his shoulder at the thick, nacreous fog as a stray beam of sunlight lit it up.

"Get her up here," he called down to them and Elias nodded, watching their backs as Jack picked up Christine and ran for the doors.

"More of them, six o'clock," Elias said, panting as he backed up the steps.

"How many?"

"Four."

"Jack, raise hell on this door," Rufus said, moving out and away from the trainees to stand next to the auburn-haired hunter. "I just got _done_ with goddamned vampires."

"Must like you," Elias said, quarter-turning as the group in front of them spread out.

"Yeah, just my luck."

There was a drawn-out screech from behind them as the door opened, and Rufus saw Jack disappear inside with Christine from the corner of his eye as he watched the vamps slow down.

"What the hell took you two so long?"

The voice was familiar. Risking a fast glance over his shoulder, Rufus saw Nathaniel Winslow behind him. He hadn't seen the hunter in more than eight years.

"You know, two-way radios are called that for a reason, you sonofabitch," he said shortly. "Could've warned us you had company."

"Could've if the vamps hadn't figured out about the two-way part," Nate agreed readily. "Had some kind of jammer going for the last week, and more and more of them just keep showing up."

Elias frowned. "They're monsters, Nate, not Radio Shack geeks."

"Well, someone's teaching them something," Nate said, moving out between them, the blade in his hand glinting softly in the dim light.

The vampires stopped, staring at the three men for a moment then turned and vanished into the mist.

"Odds not so favourable?" Elias wondered aloud.

"Better hope that's the case," Rufus growled, gesturing to the inside of the building. "We've got a vulnerable lot of people sitting on the other side of the river, so let's hear it fast," he added to Nate as the door was closed and locked and chained up behind them.

"Heard some chatter right at the edge of the signal about four weeks ago," Nate said, striding down the linoleum-covered hallway toward the cafeteria. "We started south, thinking the farmland would be better down that way, and got stuck here when something – probably the fangs – knifed every tyre on the vehicles."

"Toby with you?" Elias asked.

"Yep, and a bunch of civilians who figure themselves vampire hunters," Nate said, the smile in his voice not making it to his face.

Rufus looked at him. The man's tall frame was thin, dark brown hair greying now along the hairline, a lot more lines etched into the weather-roughened skin. "How many you got here?"

"Just over a hundred, mostly women and kids," he said. "They came from Boulder, said that they were freed when the city was attacked, but they're not branded."

"There were groups of people who were working for the demons of their own free will," Rufus told him acerbically. "Did they say what happened to the rest of them?"

Nate shook his head. "The lot of them were shell-shocked when we found them."

In the cafeteria, groups of people were huddled on the floor. By the exterior windows, Rufus saw Toby Fulham, the young hunter holding a carbine, ignoring the general cold in a khaki singlet that showed a heavily muscled and broad-shouldered frame. The barrel of the gun lifted slightly in acknowledgement but his eyes didn't leave the window.

There were a few men scattered through the groups, Rufus noted curiously. More kids than anything else. The fearless vampire slayers were standing by the kitchen doors, six of them holding their long chef's knives and cleavers nervously by their sides, none over twenty-five by the looks of it.

"What do you know about these vamps?" Rufus turned to Nate.

"When they ran us in here the first morning – they used the mist from the low ground. The soil's saturated everywhere, every time we get a cold night and some sun in the morning, it rises," he said, dark eyes shifting restlessly around the room. "I thought there were about six or seven of them then. We lost about ten people that night, before we found the school. The next attack there were more."

"So they didn't drain them, they turned them," Elias said.

Nate nodded. "We were better prepared the next time, and there's about ten of them left. Too many for just me and Tobe, and we could hear you guys on the CB, heading this way. Just hoped you'd find us."

Elias lifted a brow at him. "Some hope."

"Not much choice," Nate said, gesturing around the room. "Most of these people can't run, not enough food in the last few weeks."

"Where are your vehicles?"

"Down by that torn-up shed near the bridge."

"You got enough to get all of these folks out?"

"If we can find tyres or get enough time to mend the ones we got, yeah," Nate said with a one-shouldered shrug. "Haven't had any luck so far."

"We'll have to take out the vamps," Elias said, looking at Rufus. "Can't do a running fight with these people, and we'll only lead them back to our own if we try and make a break for it." He looked at Nate. "Any idea on where they're nesting?"

"The boneyard down the road, I think." Nate scratched his eyebrow tiredly. "I thought it was just one of those modern plot ones, you know, no bodies, just crematorium pots, but turns out there's a deep underground vault in the middle. Fucked if I know what happens when the river floods."

Rufus looked away, thinking about that. "Flooding the river might be just what we need to do," he said slowly.

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Kansas**_

The office throbbed and bulged, in and out in time with his pulse. Chuck looked around the room uneasily, seeing the colours smear one into the other, the small desk lamp brightening in his eyes until he had to close them, lifting his arm over his face to block it out.

He hadn't had a headache like this since … the memory came back and he started violently, shoving the chair away from the desk, staggering up from it and feeling his way around the end of the desk.

"Chuck? You okay, man?" Mitch's voice sounded a long way away and Chuck nodded, teeth clenching together as the movement exacerbated the pain behind his eyes.

"Need to lie down," he whispered, feeling his way to the long couch that sat in front of the hearth. The fire was lit, he could see the dancing flames through his closed lids. Too bright as well but he was going throw up if he didn't get horizontal in the next few seconds.

"Chuck?" Mitch watched him pitch headfirst onto the couch, shivering as he rolled onto his side, despite the warmth of the fire. He hurried to the end, looking down at Chuck's paper-white face, hands drawn into white-knuckled fists. Chuck did not look okay. Chuck looked a long, long way from anything like okay.

"I'll get Merrin," he said aloud, making the decision and turning for the door. "I'll be right back."

Chuck didn't hear him, lost in the vortex of pain and image and sound that rocketed through his head as the conduit, almost forgotten but still there, opened up. His eyes rolled up into his skull as the vision overtook him and carried him away.

* * *

_**Lake West, Tawas Lake, Michigan**_

"Whaddaya mean you can't go?" Dean stared in frustration at Jo. "You and Maurice and Ty are the only ones who know the place!"

"Which word is giving you trouble, Winchester?" she asked him coolly. "I can't go. Not now."

"Why?"

Giving a long, dramatic sigh, she looked at Ty. Her partner shrugged slightly, smiling.

"Because I'm pregnant," she said, looking back at Dean. "And I'm not risking the baby."

Dean looked at her for a moment, then shifted his gaze to Ty. The younger hunter spread out his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

"Oh."

"And Ty's not going anywhere, not for the next nine months," she added, walking to stand beside him. "What about Maurice?"

"Maurice is somewhere up north, looking for survivors," Dean scowled at the floor. "No idea when he'll be back."

"We left the place intact," Ty said pacifically. "Even the plagues won't have done much to the ordnance there. It's not hard to find."

He'd already been over those arguments, Dean thought sourly. He'd wanted someone who'd been there, who could clue him into the layout and the possible booby-traps that Lucifer's demons might've left, if they'd thought the hunters would return for another load.

"Alright, forget it," he said, letting out his breath in an exhale as loud and gusty as Jo's had been. "Boze said you had twenty trainees here? How are they shaping up?"

"Good," Jo said, relieved that the conversation had been dropped. She'd found out the week before and was still going through the ups and downs of what she thought of it, her feelings – hormone-enhanced Bernice had assured her – swinging wildly between a deep, fierce desire to protect her child at all costs, and uncertainty that she was ready for this leap into an adulthood she'd been fighting her mother to establish for the past five years. "They've been doing a lot of the scouting, up north and into the new forests over the last few months, with Ty and Tim and Vince, when he's here, and they're getting there."

"Anything in the forests?"

"Not that anyone's seen so far," she said, frowning. "Why?"

"Not just the good mother who's wandering around," Dean gestured vaguely at her abdomen. "Michigan was always a favourite for wraiths and ghouls, around the lakes."

"Not many bodies or fresh meat for either now. We've got the new protocols in place," Ty said slowly. "Field work finishes an hour before sundown. Everyone's in and checked twice, once through the gate, once into the hall."

"Planting done?"

"Yeah, Dave was insistent on the winter wheat and rye," Jo said dryly. "It's done."

"Good," Dean said distractedly. He'd wanted to head straight for McAlester with Jo and Ty but he'd have to get back to Kansas now, figure out someone else to take. Sam would be agitating to go, he knew. He wasn't sure about that. His little brother had been improving slowly, but he could still see the doubts at the back of his eyes, the fear that he hadn't dealt with. And he needed Sam to keep an eye on things in Lebanon anyway, he told himself. Needed someone who had the same tactical upbringing to watch for the patterns that would show themselves in the event of any kind of planned attack.

"Tell Boze I'm heading back to Kansas," he said to Jo. "I'll check in with him when I get there."

She nodded and stepped closer to Ty as he turned around and walked out of the office. Nothing had changed for Dean, really, she thought a little sadly. He had backup and friends and the loyalty of the people who followed him, who'd follow him anywhere, but the responsibility that had marked him out as different from other guys from the moment she'd first seen him was still there, just as heavy, just as unrelenting.

"He needs someone to help out with running this stuff," Ty remarked, in sync with her thoughts.

"He'd never let anyone do that," she said, not sure how she knew that, just certain of it in her heart.

* * *

_**I-70 W, Missouri**_

The rumble of the engine, the stereo playing over that, the road, cracked and humped, but open, filling the windshield ahead of him … Dean glanced to the side. If Sam'd been hunched up in the passenger seat, he could've convinced himself that the last three years had just been a dream. Of course, the growth to either side of the road and the lack of houses or cars or people didn't really support the illusion.

The other thought, the one that lurked in the background most of the time, still nagged at him at times like this. Did he want to go back? People wouldn't have died. Or been possessed in such quantities, tortured, their lives torn to shreds, but did he want to give up what had come from that and pretend it didn't matter?

The hits kept on coming. He had the feeling that nothing, no realignment of the threads of destiny or whatever it was Cas kept telling him about, would ever change that. There was a struggle between the forces of light and darkness going on and neither side would stop until they got what they wanted, and the fallout would be significant as it always was. He had no idea why he and Sam seemed to be at the centre of it. Cas and Jerome could talk about angel genetics and the bloodlines but it seemed to him that there was a lot more going on behind the curtains that had nothing to do with that, that had plotted and planned and schemed to use their family for other reasons, more complex ones, insidious ones. He couldn't see the patterns, the shape of them yet, but he could feel them, that occasional sense of being watched, being judged, by something that never slept in the black stillness of the deepest watches of the night.

He had people to put his back against now. People he could trust. People he cared about. In one way, that was something he would never willingly give up. In another, it brought home to him that if he had those things, there must be a reason for it. And behind that was the sure knowledge that when he cared about people, cared about someone, they either left, or they died. He couldn't think of a single reason why that would change now.

_Everyone here, and in Michigan, is here and alive because of you, because of what you did_. Alex had told him that, a couple of weeks ago, during a meandering conversation about the possibilities of destiny and the way things had worked out. The weight of that responsibility, to these people, to the world, sat no more lightly on him now than it had three years ago, or six or ten.

_I want to stop losing people we love. I want you to go to school, I want Dean to have a home. I want ... I want Mary alive. It's just ... I just want this to be over_. The motel in Salvation and the utter hopelessness in his father's voice. The knowledge that he needed to be stronger, to help his father rid the world of the evil that invaded their lives. The fear that he wasn't going to be strong enough. Had he known then that it would never be over? That something would always crawl out of the darkness to threaten whatever it was he had and force him onto the battlefield again?

_Those with the ability to do the job have the responsibility to see that it gets done_. Another touchstone of his life. One he'd believed in for a long time, still did, although he wished that things were different, could be different.

Running the harvesters, hunting for game in the newly grown forests, talking late into the night with Jackson or Bobby or Rufus or Maurice, no shop talk, just conversation about life. Going through the store rooms with Alex, or the ordnance supplies with Franklin, the day-to-day jobs that were all a part and parcel of this life, this new life with its decisions and friends and experiences. It was changing him, he knew. He didn't know how exactly, if it made it easier or harder, but it was changing him from the man he'd been after his father's death, after being raised by an angel, to someone else.

He leaned back against the seat, hands light on the wheel. The temptation was strong to put the tangled mess of his thoughts out of his head, turn up the music and just be – for a while at least. The only trouble was it didn't help.

They'd lost contact with Rufus and Maurice four days ago. That could be for a number of reasons, all of them non-threatening and valid. Bobby'd said that Maurice was looking at a pack of werewolves. That was … unsettling. Because of the bite, they were hard enough to kill anyway; attacking in numbers wasn't going to make it any easier. He thought of the pack that they'd seen in Porter's Mill, drawn there by the Whore. Rufus'd had bullets made up for the M60 he lugged around, and Paul said that a couple of sprays with that had pretty much done the job from behind the barricades. It was something he'd have to talk to Franklin about. Silver was a bitch to make bullets with, the melting point so high that it needed the most skilled people to work with it. He couldn't remember now if Franklin had said anything about useful apprentices.

Jo's condition was a pointed reminder that both the human population and the monster populations were going to be booming in a few short months. There'd been no further contact with the Watchers, or with Peter or any word on how the European hunters were doing. Michel hadn't heard anything for the last two weeks. Again, it didn't mean that something had gone wrong, only that communications were difficult, once line of sight had been passed. He wondered vaguely if they were any techs out there who could get the landlines working again. Even if they had to go back to operators, it'd be a help between Kansas and Michigan. Alex would know, he thought. He'd ask her as soon as he got in.

And that was another thing, another change, another … point of vulnerability that he couldn't face. She didn't say – stay or go. She didn't ask for anything from him. He remembered a lot of times when he'd stayed away from the rooms he'd shared with Lisa because he couldn't face talking or doing anything else, too tired, too filled with the heavy responsibilities that lay over him like a shroud. But that hadn't happened in the last six months. It might've been too early to tell, he thought, frowning at the road that uncurled in front of him. He didn't think so. He was never too tired. Never that tired that he didn't want her, want to be with her, to watch her, listen to her. And she was one of the very few he could talk to without any kind of hesitation, knowing she'd listen, and hear the words, and what lay beneath them, and what lay beneath that as well, knowing that she wouldn't lie, wouldn't sugar-coat an unpalatable truth, wouldn't pretend that everything would work out fine when it plainly wouldn't.

He'd summoned Death. He'd actually threatened that entity to bring her back. But he hadn't said anything about it since then, and she hadn't either. He didn't know what that meant, or why he couldn't get it out of his head, as if there was something there he should've known, should've seen but hadn't. He spent his days careful not to think about her and he didn't know why.

* * *

_**West Keep, Lebanon**_

The gates stood open, the guards to either side stepping in as the black car pulled up in front of them. Salt. Iron. Silver. Holy water. They nodded, two of Franklin's, Dean thought, and stepped back and he drove through the town which had become a castle, the car growling deeply in first as he avoided the people walking around him and zig-zagged his way to the western bailey and the deep three-sided shelters that lined the northern wall. Turning off the engine, he sat for a moment in the near-silence, listening to the hot metal tick, feeling a measure of relief that he was back. Home.

Alex looked around as he walked into the office, brows rising. "Thought you'd be halfway to Oklahoma by now?"

"Change of plan," he said shortly. "Did you know that Jo was pregnant?"

"No," Alex said, glancing down at the desk top. "But it's not exactly surprising, is it?"

"Surprised me," he said, shaking his head. "Who's around that I can take?"

"Uh, Vince got back yesterday, he's training the juniors this week," she told him. "Sam's free –"

"No, not Sam," he interrupted. "What about the trainees?"

"Joseph, Zoe, Billy and Perry are all on standard rotation this week." She looked down the list of hunters and trainees in Lebanon. "Maggie got back from the recce run to Washington yesterday; she's been up at the library. Bobby's here, by the way, looking for you. I told him you'd back in a few days." Her nose wrinkled up. "He's probably down with Franklin."

"Ellen here with him?"

She shook her head. "No, she's at Lightning Ridge. They moved over while we were in Michigan."

"Can you get Maggie and Billy and Zoe? They'll do," he said abruptly. "Tell them we'll leave in the morning. Did Bobby say what he wanted to talk about?"

"Chuck," she said, closing the files on the desk and following him to the door.

"What about Chuck?"

"I don't know, he didn't go into details."

"Why not?" he asked, turning at the doorway and stopping to look down at her.

She shrugged and walked past him. "I don't know, Dean. He just wanted to talk to you and then he left."

He walked slowly down the hall after her, brows drawn together, turning to go out to the courtyard as she kept going. Alex was kept in the loop about everything, why would Bobby not tell her this?

* * *

Franklin had half the bottom of the Eastern Keep and he walked fast down through the narrow tunnel that divided the two sections. There were two trucks they could take in the morning, both ex-Army. Maggie would be a learning curve for the trainees, he thought suddenly, a dry grin curving up one side of his mouth.

The workshop door was open and he could hear the low murmur of voices under an intermittent banging inside, his eyes narrowing as they adjusted to the gloom after the sunshine outside.

"Bobby?"

"Dean, Alex said you'd gone already," Bobby said, turning around and pushing his cap back a little.

"Had to come back," Dean said shortly. "What about Chuck?"

"He's had a vision, he said," Bobby told him, glancing at Franklin who'd put down his tools and was listening.

"A vision – you mean a prophet-type vision?" Dean looked at him questioningly. "About what?"

"Ah," Bobby said slowly, nodding toward the door. "It was a bit confusing, might be better if you talked to him yourself." He looked over his shoulder at Franklin. "Can we do the quantities?"

Franklin nodded. "You find me the silver, I'll make up as much as you need. We've got the blast furnace and taps and dies and moulds for everything now, just need the size and the metal and you're good."

"Good to hear, guess that the silverware will've survived everything that's happened, I'll get some teams out."

"For the werewolf packs?" Dean asked as Bobby crowded him out the door.

Bobby nodded. "Rufus made up a case of silver ammo for his, thought we'd better get on and do the same for the bigger guns, especially the keep defences."

"Okay," Dean agreed readily. "Now, what didn't you want to tell me in front of Franklin?"

"The vision was about you and Sam and something to do with Hell," Bobby said quietly, walking with him down to the curtain wall gate tunnel. "I figured it was best if you got the info first, before the whole damned Keep knew about it."

"Why didn't you tell Alex?"

Bobby looked down at the ground uncomfortably. "Didn't know if you wanted her to know the details or not."

Dean stopped walking, turning to look at him. "Why?"

"You didn't want her to know about the vampire –"

"That was –" he cut himself off, looking away in frustration. "That was different. And I was wrong about that," he added, looking back at Bobby. "She knows everything I know. That's the way it is."

"Sure," Bobby said, lifting a shoulder. "You coming or not?"

"I'll get the car and follow you," Dean said, thinking about getting back. "Sam know about this?"

Bobby nodded. "Chuck passed out yesterday morning. Woke up sometime after midnight, Sam was the first one he told."

"Alright, I'll see you there."

He turned away, walking back up to West Keep. He should've asked Bobby if it had been his decision to keep the details from Alex. It sounded more like a call Ellen or Sam might've made. Things were hard enough without keeping this kind of information from her, he thought exasperatedly.

He saw Alex coming down the steps of the Keep and lengthened his stride as he went to meet her.

"You got a few minutes?" he asked, turning with a short gesture toward the bailey.

"Maggie's still at the library, the trainees'll be ready to go at dawn," she told him as she hurried to keep up with his longer stride. "You're still going then, right?"

"Yeah," he said, walking into the shed and opening the car door for her. "Listen, I don't know why Bobby didn't tell you about Chuck –"

Sliding into the passenger seat, Alex shook her head, waiting for him to open his door. "It doesn't matter, there's probably a lot I don't need to –"

He got in, fingers resting on the keys as he looked at her. "No, you need to know everything, everything I do," he told her firmly, turning the key. For a moment the car's roar drowned out any possible conversation in the confines of the shed, then he reversed out, turning to head for the gates.

She looked out the passenger window without responding, and he flicked a glance at her.

"This started after the vampire thing, right?"

"Around then, yeah," she said.

"Why didn't you tell me?" He looked at the road, dodging people as they stepped out in front of him. "What else have you been kept out of?"

She looked at him then, smiling slightly. "I don't know. It's not that a big a deal, there's a lot of stuff that I just thought was hunter business, you know," she said lightly. "And I didn't tell you because I thought you were the one who'd given the instructions."

"And that didn't worry you?" he asked, an edge of disbelief sharpening his voice. "Why didn't you ask me? Check with me, at least?"

"Ask what?" She shrugged. "Ask you about information I didn't know I wasn't getting? I only found out about it because Merrin came in to find out why Kim wanted to do some cultures on werewolf tissue and whether we had colloidal silver in stock." She turned in the seat to look at him. "I just figured there was a lot of stuff you didn't think I needed to know."

He scowled at a group standing in the middle of the road, watching them scurry to one side as the engine revved slightly, unsure if they were still talking about the Keep business or if the conversation had slid sideways to more personal ground.

"Well, there isn't," he said, approaching the gates. The guards looked surprised to seem him heading out again but stepped clear quickly. "Anything I don't think you need to know, I mean."

Alex looked at his profile as they drove through the gates and he turned left. She wondered if he meant that.

* * *

_**St Peter's Basilica, Vatican City**_

The vaults had been carved from the soft rock, centuries ago, the steps leading down worn deep in the centres from the passage of many feet. Isabeau walked slightly in front and to one side of Elena, holding the burning torch high above her head as they advanced slowly. They could hear the slurring of feet on the stone in the tunnels below them, smell the faint reek of rotten flowers and rotting meat on the airs that kept the catacombs ventilated. They were here, somewhere, Elena thought coldly, and it would be too easy to become trapped down here, picked off at the monsters' leisure.

"It's widening ahead," Isabeau breathed, her voice transmitted to the earpieces of the wireless headsets.

"Francois, break left and cover; Marc to the right," Elena ordered, equally softly.

There was no chance of being able to take them by surprise or slip past. She tightened her grip on the sabre she carried, the slightly curving blade razor-sharp and lifted, ready for the attack.

Isabeau swung the torch and threw it into the centre of the chamber, following it fast. She was hit from the side, a fragmented glimpse of pale skin, dark hair and eyes and long, white teeth, glistening in the firelight then the vampire was dragged from her, a high-pitched, wavering moan echoing from the stone walls. Rolling to her knees, she stared in disbelief at the grey-skinned, red-eyed creature wrestling with the vampire two feet to her left.

The torch-light flickered violently around the stone, casting shifting shadows over the mass of combatants, staggering and howling and moaning and shrieking in the small space, ragged clothing whipping around over slipping skin, blood-darkened fangs and rotted teeth savagely clamping onto pouched, mottled skin and smooth, hard skin alike.

"_Fils de putain!_" Francois swung his machete and a head went flying into the wall, its sagging skin hiding the eyes and mouth as it hit with a wet crack. "_Casse-toi, salop!_"

Elena spun around, the sabre slicing through the hand that had gripped her shoulder, embedding itself in the chest as she lifted a foot and shoved the ghoul off her blade and watching dazedly as it stumbled back into a vampire, turning on it with a snarl.

"_Succhiasangue filth! La nostra preda! Il nostro!_"

The vampire grinned and opened its mouth, tearing a mouthful from the ghoul's face and spitting it on the floor.

"_Comedenti mortuorum, praeda omnis nostra est_," it crooned, the crack of the ghoul's neck barely heard under the noise of the melee.

"ELENA!"

She turned around at the shout, familiar but a voice she had not expected to hear again.

"Out! Now!" Peter crouched by the tunnel entrance on the far side of the chamber, a long cylinder held in his hands, goggles covering half his face.

"_Tout le monde dehors!_" she called, swinging the sabre to cut her way across to the hunter. "_Vite! Vite!_"

Peter slammed the end of the flare on the floor and threw it across the chamber, the argentine light growing brighter and brighter as it hit the floor, hissing and smoking and bleeding colour and shadow from the stone, burning the vampires and blinding the ghouls.

Ducking his head, Francois grabbed Isabeau, thrusting her ahead of him as he saw Marc and Jean stumbling away from the centre of the chamber, eyes screwed shut and hands outstretched to find the walls. The vampires were doubled-over, falling to the floor and kneeling, arms over their faces as they crawled away from the flare. Peter, goggles darkened to black, reached forward and pulled Jean through the entrance, and set off the second flare, leaving it at the mouth of the tunnel. They would burn for ten minutes or more, emitting ultraviolet strong enough to give the vampires a good case of sunburn, he thought. He dragged the goggles up, settling them over his forehead and gestured down the tunnel.

"Keep going, this way takes us to the library," he snapped at Elena. "They are not the only things to haunt the catacombs now."

* * *

_**Chamberlain, South Dakota**_

The sun had burned off most of the mist in the town and from the woods on the other side of the river. Rufus looked down the long levee, gaze sharpening on the shaped charges that were visible only as small heaps of earth along and over the hump. There had been a couple of vamps still lurking in the shadows of the building as they'd come out, their bodies lying headless now, but it looked like the rest had retreated until nightfall.

He glanced back toward the bridge and bank where the interstate crossed the river. Elias was almost invisible in the patch of dead reeds and shrubs close to the water's edge. The two lines of charges would take down the bridge, Rufus thought, looking back up the bank. And the water would back up and flow in once the levee was blown. The lay of the land worked for them, a long gentle slope to the nearest buildings and the graveyard beyond them.

"Blow it," he said softly, lifting and dropping his arm.

Daisy-chained together the explosives went off in a staccato burst along the bridge, and in a deeper cannonade across the levee. He watched Elias scramble back from the river's edge, turning and running up the slope as the bridge supports fell into the water, sending a monstrous backwash up river, and the stable bank of the levee was shattered. The water rushed upriver … and down, following the path of least resistance and seeping slowly at first, then faster down the new channel toward the town.

Getting to his feet, Rufus started walking along the high ground toward the buildings, hearing a rustle in the grasses behind him as Jack climbed the bank and followed him. The explosions should've woken the vamps, but it wasn't a sure thing. Christine and Elias would be at the cemetery by now and the sunlight, bright and clear for once, would work in their favour. They could start the civilians across the second, smaller bridge as soon as the butcher work was finished.

"Not bad for an old man, eh?" Rufus said quietly to Jack.

"No, you got your moments, man," Jack agreed with a smile, pulling his machete out of its sheath. "Not many, but you've definitely got 'em."

"Ingrate."

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Kansas**_

Dean saw the look Ellen flashed at Sam as he came into the library, Alex behind him. He'd talk to them later, he decided, looking at Chuck sitting at the long table, head propped up with one hand. Chuck looked like he had in '09, crap from head to foot.

"Visions again?" he asked him, sitting down in the chair to his right.

"Yeah," Chuck said softly, the volume indicative of how his head was feeling, Dean thought.

"Like the last time?"

"Pretty much," the writer admitted. "Like watching it. I got it all down."

He pushed a thick sheaf of paper across the desk toward Dean and closed his eyes. Dean picked it up, looking up at his brother.

"You read this?"

Sam nodded. "Still centred around us."

Dean picked up the first page and started to read, passing each page to Alex as he worked his way through the stack. The room was silent as he read, and he forced himself to concentrate on the pages, instead of looking at the faces that he could feel staring at him.

"Not your usual tight prose, Chuck," he said, passing the last page to Alex and looking at the writer.

"Bite me," Chuck said tiredly.

Dean gave him a lopsided grin, and turned to look at Bobby. "Seems like the Grigori are going to be a problem sooner than we thought."

Bobby nodded. "Has to be them. No idea how they met with that Crowley fella, though."

Jerome glanced at Katherine, who shrugged and looked away. "The gates to Hell can be opened by a blood key."

"First I heard of it," Bobby said, turning to look at him.

"It was a well-guarded secret," Katherine said dryly. "Black magic, forbidden knowledge."

"It isn't the only way to get into Hell, either," Davis said heavily. "At least according to legend."

Sam's brow creased up tightly. "What?"

"The psychopomps can lead a mortal into the other planes," the professor said, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. "Those who guide the dead to their next destination."

"I never found any –" Sam started to say hotly, shooting an accusing glance at Bobby.

"Forget it," Dean cut him off. "Not the real problem here."

"The Grigori – or the nephilim – are not affected by the warding we have around the settlements, are they?" Alex looked at him.

He shook his head. "No, we don't have angel proofing, and I have no clue what the hell to use for half-breed proofing." Turning his head to look at Chuck, he asked, "What's the time frame on this, Chuck?"

"After winter," Chuck said, gesturing vaguely at the pages. "The passes through the Rockies are going to be closed before Christmas, I think. I could see them, snowed-in somewhere, Idaho, I think."

"So they can't zap around, like the angels?"

"No, they have to get around the same way we do."

"That helps," Sam said. "Gives us time."

Alex looked down at the slim sheaf of papers she held. It read like a story, a chilling one at that. Dean and Sam were on the road somewhere, their location unspecified, and the fallen angels, along with at least some of their children and a demon army led by a mysterious man with enormous power, marched across Nebraska toward Kansas. Chuck had been generous with the details, too generous, she thought with a shiver. The army were possessed humans, gathered along the way between Washington state and Wyoming. They didn't have the time to get there and pull the people out before winter – an unusually severe winter, according to the writer – blocked the roads and made travel near impossible.

"This isn't going to go down like this anyway," Dean said and Alex looked up to find his gaze on her. "There's no way I'm anywhere but here knowing this is going to happen."

Sam glanced at Chuck. "That usually doesn't work out –"

"Yeah, well, this time it is," Dean cut him off. "There's nothing that's gonna change it." He stood up, and looked from Sam to Bobby. "Change of plans for McAlester too."

"What?"

"We need some of their specialised stuff, not just the weapons and ammo," Dean said. "Franklin'll know if they have it there."

"Like what?" Bobby asked quizzically.

"Those all-terrain vehicles they use in the artic stations, for one," he said, with a shrug. "If we can move around when everyone else is stuck, it'll make a difference."

Ellen looked at him, seeing the decision already made. He would take the fight away from the population, if he could. She turned to look at Jerome. "We've got information here, and in the other chapters, Jerome. Is it likely we can find protection against the fallen and the half-breeds here?"

"Possible. Yes. Likely? I don't know," he said. "The order tracked the Grigori up until World War II successfully. From there, however, they seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth."

Davis looked at him. "Vanished or split up and started new groups?"

"I don't know," Jerome said, brows drawing together. "Why?"

"Because Hitler was obsessed with the occult for a period of time between '38 and '44," he said slowly. "Perhaps the reason was that they offered him their services?"

"The Thule society?"

"It's a possibility, isn't it?"

"The Thule society?" Sam looked at Davis. "What were they?"

"Aaron, Marla," Jerome turned in his chair to look at the two initiates. "Pull every file and book relating to the Thules – they should be on Level Three."

Nodding, the two left the library. Jerome turned back to see Bobby, Ellen, Sam, Dean and Alex looking at him expectantly.

"The Thules were a group who formed in 1911, ostensibly as occultists who were researching the origins of the Aryan race. They had a lot of theories and myths and virtually no facts. In 1919 they originated the _Deutsche Arbeiterpartei_ – the German Worker's Party –"

"By the end of 1920, that party had become the _Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei_, the National Socialist German Worker's Party," Katherine interjected acerbically. "More commonly known as the Nazi Party."

"They became Nazis?" Dean looked at her questioningly.

"Among other things," Jerome cut in. "They were never much interested in the politics, only the power that they could see was coming. Power to further their studies in various aspects of necromancy and black magic without restraint or question."

"An' Hitler gave 'em that power?" Bobby asked dryly.

Jerome glanced at him and nodded. "Along with all the resources they needed."

"Didn't anyone fight them?" Ellen asked.

"Many did," Jerome said. "The order has files on a dozen groups in Europe who fought against them, both openly and through sabotage … the Jews, the Rom, the Magyar … those are the files that Aaron and Marla will bring up, as well as the details on the society itself."

"Alright," Dean said. "And?"

"And after the war, they slipped away like ghosts," Jerome said heavily. "They were never found. Doppelgängers were created, used to fool the authorities into thinking they had captured or killed the most publicly known."

"Doppelgängers?" Sam flicked a look at his brother.

"Creations," Bobby said shortly. "Supposedly from something of the original person, an exact copy could be produced with a certain spell."

"Yes," Katherine agreed. "And programmed to do what the original person wanted it to do."

Dean rubbed a hand over his face. "Alright, so the fallen angels played around with the Nazi party until they lost the war, then made doubles of themselves to take the fall and disappeared?" He looked around the table. "Why are they joining up with the demons and attacking us?"

"Looking for the same thing Hell is, I suppose," Jerome said. "The Word of God."

"Why do they think we have it?"

"I don't know if they think we have the tablets," Jerome said slowly, casting a fleeting glance at Chuck. "But they were angels once, and they probably know that the prophet is here."

"So what?"

"Only the prophet can read the Word," Davis said, smiling a little derisively. "At least, according to the heretical texts on the subject."

"So Chuck's the target?" Dean asked. At the end of the table, Chuck turned white.

"It seems most likely."

* * *

_**Blue Earth, Minnesota**_

Rona looked around the street as the chilly dawn light spread across the sky. There were a dozen bodies lying there, riddled with bullet holes, the blood drying on bare, blue-tinted skin. The assault rifle in her hands was fully loaded, and she carried it with her finger over the trigger guard, acutely aware that werewolves who didn't need the full moon, might not mind the sun either.

Drew and Alison moved through the dead, nodding as they recognised the survivors who'd been turned when the monsters had first attacked. Maurice watched them, impressed by the control both had over themselves. Drew Ryan had been a Detroit cop, Alison had told him the previous evening before the attack had started. She'd been a high school teacher in the Southside of Chicago. It went a little way to explain their pragmatic approach to problems.

He looked up as Lee and Danielle drove the buses along the road from the square. They'd been lucky. The high school had its own small fleet and all of them had been locked up tight in a steel and brick shed. Four of the people here claimed experience in driving a bus and they followed the trainees to the front of the building, giving the bodies a wide clearance.

"Let's get everyone loaded," he called out to Drew. "We'll be there before nightfall if we get going now."

He hoped that would be the case. They had two hundred and thirteen people now, protected by two hunters, two trainees and a few civilians who could handle themselves. He couldn't risk stop and looking around for more people, not until they got these folks safely to Kansas and within the Keep walls.

"Maurice?"

He turned around, seeing Tilly behind him. "All your people ready, Tilly?"

She nodded, her gaze drawn to the bodies beside the building. "In the books, uh, werewolves only ever hunt on the full moon."

"Yeah," Maurice said, wondering how he was going to explain this. "Normally, that's true. Things have changed a little."

Her voice dropped lower and she leaned closer to him. "There are at least twenty pregnant women in our group, and I think there's probably more."

"What?" he asked, brows rising. "Since when?"

"Four weeks ago, I think, just before the Indian summer ended," she said, looking past him to the people getting onto the buses. "Ray called it moon madness, but I thought it was just people trying to let go of the tension."

He watched the colour rise up her neck and sighed. "We've got doctors, in Lebanon," he said, hoping that would be reassuring. "They'll look after everyone."

"That's not – you know the statistical improbability of a conception rate like that in a group like ours?"

He blinked at her. "No."

"It's astronomical," she told him tersely. "And Alison told me that there are at least ten, probably more, who could well be pregnant in her group as well."

_Great_, Maurice thought. _That ought to give Kim and Merrin something to do come summer_.

"I was wondering if the … changes …" She gestured to the bodies. "And these pregnancies might be related?"

_Oh, they'll definitely be related_, Maurice thought sourly. How, that was anybody's guess, but he had no doubt that they were. "They might be," he admitted.

"Do you think the pregnancies are going to be normal?"

_A topic he knew nothing about_. "I don't know, Tilly. If the … uh … conception was normal, I can't see why they'd be different. But … um … when we get home, the docs can check everyone out."

"How?"

"We're pretty well equipped, even for the end of the world," he said, hoping it would reassure her.

"I worked in the neo-natal unit of Jefferson in Philly, before," she said. "We were seeing a rise in pre-term and special needs care even then. I'm just worried –"

Maurice nodded. "We don't know what's changed, Tilly. I mean, look around, everything has been growing way out of its normal patterns for months now."

"That's what I mean!" she said to him. "If the trees and the animals are growing like that –"

"We'll be in Lebanon in about eight-nine hours," Maurice cut her off. "I'll take you straight to Dr Sui when we get there, okay?"

She dragged in a deep breath, wrestling with herself for control. "Okay."

He watched walk down to the buses and lifted his gaze to the northern horizon. The last few weeks, the frosts had been hard and bitter. Along the rising ground to the north he could see the clouds building up. It was a little early for a big storm, but they'd be down in Kansas before it could reach them, he thought.

* * *

_**West Keep, Kansas**_

The small office was warm, the flames licking over the logs in the hearth, and despite its air of organised chaos, somehow soothing. Dean sat in the comfortable armchair, a stack of books piled haphazardly on the edge of the desk beside him, the one in front of him forgotten, his attention on the maple-gold hair on the other side, hiding Alex's face as she made the calculations based on the projections of the numbers of healthy, fertile women in the five fortified settlements and the last figures from Jackson on the harvest.

She lifted her chin from the cup of her hand, pushing back the curls from her face as she focussed on him.

"Well?"

"So far as food is concerned, we'll be fine. Not just for this year, but probably for the foreseeable future, because the land here is good enough to give heavy returns and we have, in real terms, a virtually unlimited supply of it," she said, gesturing at the ledgers to one side. "Accommodation is going to be another matter, especially if Rufus and Maurice have found more people."

"What about moving some people over to Michigan?"

"Same story there, Dean." She exhaled and closed the books. "Barring the usual statistical problems – which I don't think are going to apply, by the way – it looks like we'll double our population by next summer. And that's just on single births. If the fertility effect from this goddess is really powerful, we could be looking at twins or triplets as well as, or instead of single births."

They both turned to look at the narrow windows as the sounds of vehicles penetrated the thick walls.

"Alex, there's – oh, sorry," Maria said, as she pushed open the door and saw them. "Eric sent me to tell you there's a long line of vehicles heading our way from the north."

"How many?" Dean got up and looked at her.

"More than fifty. Adam and Felice are stationed on the outskirts of Hastings, they sent in the report."

"Friendly?"

"Unknown," she said. "But there's about ten school buses coming with them."

"Rufus," Dean said, mouth quirking up to one side as he looked back at Alex.

"We'll come down to the gates, Maria," Alex said. "Thanks."

She followed Dean out and down the hall. "That was pretty quick, wasn't it?"

"Must've found a few," Dean said with a slight shrug. "Hopefully leaving less for whoever's coming."

They walked out of the keep and along the road, joining a stream of people who were also heading to the gates.

"Passed Lightning Oak three minutes ago," Eric called down when he saw Dean.

"It'll take a while to get everyone through the tests," Dean muttered to Alex as he walked up to the gate. "Where do we send them?"

"The East Keep," Alex told him, gesturing to the other closed in court. "Liev finished the floors two weeks ago and they can take two hundred. The rest to Woodland, they're only a quarter capacity."

"What about Michigan?"

"Later, maybe," she said distractedly. "I'd rather get skills and details here and then send them on."

He looked down at her as she seemed to sway in place for a second, her eyes closing. The moment of whatever it was passed and she looked around as if nothing had happened. He wondered if he should ask about it when the first vehicle pulled up in front of the gates and he saw Rufus' wide grin through the grimy windshield.

* * *

Sam sat by the fire in the keep hall, looking at the people filling the large space. He turned as his brother came up beside him.

"Another three hundred and sixty, give or take a few," Dean said, dropping into the chair beside Sam and looking over at the small knot of men surrounding Bobby and Ellen. Rufus had brought back six more hunters. Maurice had found a woman who had taught herself and her group how to hunt from Chuck's books, apparently.

"Who're the guys with Bobby?" Sam asked curiously.

"Hunters," Rufus said, walking up behind them.

"Would we know them?" Sam leaned past his brother as Rufus took the chair on the other side of the fire.

"Maybe," he said. "The dark, shifty-looking guy, that's Kelly Kowalski. He came down from Quebec when the virus was released, looking for anyone. Canada got hit pretty hard apparently. He was in O'Neill when we came through Nebraska, running out of ammo and surrounded by skinwalkers," Rufus leaned forward in the chair, looking at the group. "Next to him is Nate Winslow. Knew your dad. He was hunting in Mexico. The guy who looks like he's bench-pressing three hundred is Toby Fulham. Born in Georgia, grew up in Texas."

"What about the girl?" Dean looked at the lean, dark girl standing next to Bobby.

"That's Win, Moses Johnson's little girl," Rufus said. "You might've met him with your Dad at Peggie's, back in the old days?"

"I don't remember him," Sam said, looking at Dean. After a moment, Dean shook his head as well.

"And the other two?" Dean looked at the men on the other side of the woman. One was very tall, lanky, hair thinning back from a high forehead. The other was shorter, broad-shouldered and wiry, the features of the hard face looking like they'd been carved from hardwood by a skilled but time-short sculptor. Thick, auburn hair fell down to his shoulders and a short beard covered his jaw and cheeks.

"The tall one's Herb Tucker," Rufus said. "Worked with Moses and took over looking out for Win when Moses was killed. The redhead is Elias Story."

"Why didn't we find these guys?" Sam looked at Rufus.

"Well, mostly they had their territories and they kept to them," Rufus said, shrugging. "If the roadhouse hadn't been torched after your dad died, you might've seen them there from time to time."

"But you know them, you and Bobby and Ellen," Dean questioned him.

"Yeah, well before the gate in Wyoming opened, and all that crap that followed that, we kept in touch mostly. Afterwards, it got a lot harder, and everyone was that much busier – you two included," Rufus said pragmatically. "By the time Pestilence released the virus; most of the surviving hunters just found someplace to dig in and stayed put until the croats began to move to the coasts."

The fire in the big hearth flared as a downdraft moaned down the chimney. Outside the keep's thick concrete and stone walls, snow began to fall, small, hard, icy pellets at first, pattering against the walls and roofs, rattling on the oilskins of the guards who walked along the battlements.


	6. Chapter 6 Winter Solstice

**Chapter 6 Winter Solstice**

* * *

_**December 2012. West Keep, Kansas**_

The scrape of shovels and the soft thuds of the removed snow echoed off the curtain wall as Dean walked down the cleared path between the two towers. Wrapped from head to foot in whatever spare winter clothing Alex, Maria and Jeff had been able to come up with, the shovellers were anonymous, standing aside as he moved past, resuming the widening of the path when he'd gone. They'd had twelve inches of snow last night, and in the closed-in baileys, it had drifted well over head-height, the bitter cold freezing the mounds as their weight pushed the air out.

The tunnel between the two keeps was at least a couple of degrees warmer, sloppy with slush and loud with the sound of trickling water escaping from the churned up snow and mud down through the wide drains that led out to the fields beyond the walls. Still cold enough for his breath to be icy in his lungs, he thought cheerlessly, splashing across a drain and emerging into the frigid air of the east courtyard.

Each one of the four enclosed baileys, dividing the defences between the two keeps, was large, almost a thousand feet long and slightly over half that in width. Another group of anonymous people shovelled the path on this side as well, making throughways from the keep to the tunnel, and to the buildings that lined the high walls.

"Franklin!" Dean grunted through the frozen-over collar pulled up around his face as he stomped his feet in the entrance of the ex-soldier's building. "You in there?"

"Here," Franklin roared out from the back. "Come all the way back."

Behind the vehicles parked in the entrance, and the walls of shelving and racks of tools, the interior had been divided into several big workshops, all high-ceilinged and well-ventilated for the work Franklin did there.

Two metal drums were cherry-red with heat, and the relative warmth of the workshop made Dean's eyes water and his nose run as he walked to the benches that lined the back wall.

"What have we got that's going to get through this?" Dean asked without preamble, putting his back to the nearer of the open drum fires.

Franklin glanced around at him, setting down the fine callipers and shaking his head. "Not much," he said doubtfully. "You still thinking of going down to McAlester?"

"We have to," Dean said, looking with interest at the bench top and the casings that Franklin was working on. "We need those vehicles. And a lot more artillery if Chuck's vision is right."

"Well, you're in luck so far as the susvees are concerned. I know McAlester kept at least four of them to send up to Alaska as replacements for the Haggslunds. You should be able to get a reasonable load in them, and they'll bring you home okay."

"And getting there?"

"With the freeze, there'll be a lot of ice," he said with a sniff. "Take the Jeep. You'll get five into it, and one of 'em can bring it back. It's high enough to get over most problems, four-wheel drive and has plenty of weight. You'll need to shovel your way through any drifts anyhow. Tell Connor to set you up – we got snow tyres and the heavy chains in the shop, ready to go."

"Thanks," Dean said, his expression souring a little at the thought of shovelling their way down to Ohio. So-called leader of the free world and he was still digging. "Anything we're especially low on?"

"Mines," Franklin said, turning back to the bench. "Anything we can set off remotely would be good, no pressure mines – and tell Ryan we need new lookout towers in the forests to the north and west asap, the ones they built six months ago are already too low for the tree growth."

"Yeah, okay," Dean said, turning away.

"Dean," Franklin said, looking over his shoulder at the younger man. "You talked to Jackson or Riley about this weather?"

"No. Why?"

"Might be nothing." Franklin shrugged. "Just seems like a big fall for this early. Jackson's been around here a long time, thought he might have an opinion."

Dean looked at him, a faint frown drawing his brows together. "On a freak snowstorm? We had a few big ones in Michigan last year, Franklin."

"Yeah," the older man agreed, his expression dour. "That bothered me then as well."

"I'll talk to them," Dean said, not sure what he was going to ask the farmers.

"Good." Franklin shivered slightly as he turned back to the bench.

* * *

The bedroom was in darkness, the fire nothing but coals and slowly rising curls of smoke in the hearth when Dean came in. He looked at the drawn curtains and the still hump under the bedcovers and walked around the bed.

"Hey."

Reaching out, he laid a hand lightly on Alex's shoulder. It was mid-afternoon and he'd spent almost an hour searching the keep for her.

"Alex?"

"Mm-hmmm?" She rolled over, looking at him through half-closed eyes. "What is it?"

"You okay?"

She opened her eyes a little wider and he watched her gaze flick to the clock beside the bed. "Yeah, just didn't get a good night's sleep."

He'd been up late the previous night, and hadn't noticed that she'd had trouble sleeping. In fact, she'd been so deeply asleep when he'd finally made it to the bed they shared that she hadn't stirred at all.

"You're heading out now?" she asked, pushing herself upright and rubbing a hand over her eyes.

"Yeah," he said distractedly, wondering if he should be worried about her. "Taking Rufus, Nate, Toby and Jack and Billy to bring back the car."

"I guess there's no time-frame on this trip?"

"Nothing accurate," he confirmed. "I'm just hoping we're not going to be snow-shoeing it down there."

Alex yawned and shook her head. "Be careful."

He watched her eyes slip shut again. "Alex, you sure you're okay?"

"Just tired," she murmured drowsily. "That's all."

He shifted closer to her and she opened her eyes again, looking up at him.

"Did you need me to do something before you go?"

"No," he said, leaning forward and dropping a light kiss on her forehead. "No, go back to sleep."

She nodded and rolled over, away from him, and he felt a flutter in his stomach. _Do you … still_, he wondered? This wasn't exactly the way he'd pictured saying goodbye to her.

Getting up, he walked out of the room, closing the door behind him, the flutter still there, uncertainty making him hesitate. _People get tired_, he told himself forcefully, walking across the living room to the front door. _Doesn't mean anything's changed_. But the feeling that something had … had changed without him noticing it … lurked around the edges of his thoughts.

* * *

The Jeep was parked in front of the keep steps and he walked down to it slowly, noticing absently that everyone was there, waiting for him, chains already half-filled with snow, gleaming dully in the flat grey light.

"You okay?" Rufus said, walking around the front of the car, his eyes narrowing as he took in the darkness of Dean's eyes, the edge he could see in the tightness of the muscles around the younger man's mouth.

"Yeah," Dean said, looking at him and nodding. "Yeah, we got everything?"

"Loaded for bear," Rufus confirmed, getting into the car and watching Dean get into the driver's seat. "You get some bad news or something?"

"No." He twisted the key and the engine rumbled into life. "No."

Shrugging inwardly, Rufus pulled the map from the glove box and looked again at the twisting route they'd marked out, sticking to the landscape where drifts would be the least likely.

"You still want to bypass Wichita and Tulsa?"

"Yeah," Dean said, glancing down at the map.

He turned the wheel and sent a rooster-tail of snow spurting up behind him, the shovelled path narrower than the wheel base.

"Don't need any extra distractions for this trip."

"You're the boss," Rufus said.

Dean made a derisory noise in his throat and slowed as the gates opened with their approach.

* * *

_**Catacombs, Vatican City, Rome**_

The tunnel dipped slightly and Elena ducked her head, following Andante down the narrow stairs.

"How the hell did you come here, Peter?" she asked, bracing her hands against the walls to either side as her foot slid slightly on the moisture-slick stone steps.

"I was in Jordan," Peter said, glancing back at her. "I got to the coast and came by boat."

"Did you see Luc, at the mouth of the Tiber?"

"No, I left my boat up the coast and came to the river closer to the city," he said. "There is a canal – more of a drain, really, that leads through the lowest vaults from the river. We'll get out that way."

"You spoke to the _Irin_?"

He nodded, slowing as the tunnel widened. "They are looking for a trap box for the goddesses."

He held up a hand and the hunters stopped, standing silently. All of them heard the metallic rasp over the stone, echoing softly in the rock tunnel.

Peter stepped soundlessly back up to the step to Elena, pressing his lips against her ear. "I found the body of a vermithrax in upper catacombs," he breathed. "And traces of others."

She turned her head so that her mouth was next to his ear. "Young?"

He nodded once. "Six, possibly more. There was a nest under the libraries. The shell fragments were recent."

Elena's breath gusted out. "We carry mirrors, but they're small –"

"So far as I can tell them, they're keeping to these two levels," Peter said, his breath warm against her skin. "I didn't see them coming up, but I could hear them. Their sight is bad, taste and smell and hearing are much stronger. We might be able to get through unseen. If we're careful."

She tapped his shoulder twice to let him know she'd understood, and turned to lean close to Isabeau, telling the young woman what Peter had told her.

The sound had gone and they crept down the stairs, waiting by the wider tunnel opening for five minutes before crossing the junction and heading down again.

* * *

_**US 177 S, Oklahoma**_

The hilly ground began to flatten out and Dean turned his head, feeling the stiffness in his shoulders and back, the vibration through the wheel from the chains over the buried concrete making driving a bitch of a job. Snow-goggles covered his eyes, cutting the glare from the unrelenting white blanket that covered everything as far as he could see. He slowed as he saw the faint mauve shadow at the base of a drift ahead of them, hearing the muttered complaints from the backseat with a slight grin. It was the fifteenth they'd had to dig through in the last four hours.

The Jeep came to a stop and Billy, Jack and Nate climbed out, yanking the wide-bladed snow shovels from the back and spreading out as they walked up to the base of the drift in front of the car.

Rufus leaned back, pulling a small flask from his jacket pocket and unscrewing it. He swallowed a mouthful and offered it to Dean.

"Haven't seen a fall like this in long time," he remarked, looking around as Dean tipped the flask up and let the whiskey run down his throat, leaving a warm blaze in his stomach. "Not since '67. And not in December, man. February, March, maybe but no way December in Okie."

Dean looked at him. "You sound like Jackson."

The back of his neck prickled suddenly, and he straightened in the seat, looking around, his hand reaching for the door-handle automatically.

"What?"

"Ssh." He pushed the door open, pulling the rifle from the sling on the door, scanning the featureless white mounds and hollows around them.

On the other side of the car, Rufus reached under the dash and pulled out his shotgun, opening his door and stepping out, the barrel of the gun raised.

"What?" he asked Dean again.

"I don't know," Dean said shortly, glancing at the three men working furiously with the shovels ahead of him.

The movement was very slight, but his peripheral vision caught it anyway and he turned his head sharply to look at the deeper shadow beneath the upturned, snow-covered wreck forty yards from the road, separating shadow from shape, and colour from colour. The huge blunt head became obvious a second before the big cat leapt out from behind the snowbank, his shout and its guttural snarl tangled.

Billy was the closest and he turned, the shovel in his hands rising sharply and instinctively. The load of snow it held hit the tiger in the face a second before it knocked him down.

"Get clear!" Dean roared at Jack and Nate, both men diving and rolling to the other side of the road, giving both shooters a clear field. Ignoring Billy's wretched scream, Dean put the first shot into the thick neck behind the ear, lifting the rifle to shoulder-height as he heard the concussive retort of the shotgun. The tiger turned, snarling furiously and leapt for Dean as he worked the bolt. Rufus' spray hit the ribs, barely able to expand at the range and knocking the animal sideways. Dean jumped clear, backing to the end of the Jeep to draw it further from Billy. Standing three and a half feet at the shoulder, the cat was huge, and he watched it respectfully as it rolled to its feet, yellow-gold eyes fixed on him.

"Dean!"

"I got it," he shouted back at Rufus. "Get Billy."

"Christ, no!" Nate yelled. "Behind you!"

Dean heard the crunch and squeak of the snow and dropped instantly, rolling under the Jeep, the flash of thick, striped white fur filling his vision as a second Siberian crouched and swiped a paw under the vehicle. He heard Rufus shooting, the pump action blasting shot after shot at one or the other of the animals, the sharp yap-yap of Nate's automatic and the frenzied growls of the tigers as they kept their focus on getting him. He saw one twisting away from the side of the car, paws crunching on the snow as it came around the rear and swore, scrambling out from under the chassis and reaching up for the door. Swinging it open, he saw the head clear the back corner, jacknifing up and throwing himself inside as the cat accelerated, the door slammed shut and the high-pitched screak of the long claws setting his teeth on edge as they skated down the metal.

On the other side, the smaller of the two tigers was lying on its side, flanks rising and falling rapidly, a dozen red-rimmed holes down the length of the long, powerful body. His head snapped back as he felt the Jeep rock, seeing the male on its hind feet now, thick white belly fur filling the passenger side window completely and claws scrabbling for a hold across the metal roof.

He felt them catch on something, felt the car tilt and rock and he threw himself across to the driver's side to get more weight there as the tiger's muscles bunched under the thick pelt and the Jeep listed to the side, the driver's side wheels lifting off the ground. The snarling escalated into a full-throated roar as Rufus and Nate shot at it, then the animal fell backwards, off the road's shoulder, and its weight dragged the car over the edge and down the bank.

Bracing himself, Dean heard the crunch as the Jeep landed on top of the tiger, sliding down the steep slope on its side with the animal dragged underneath. He flicked the safety on the rifle and jammed a hand against the roof, hoping there were no trees or boulders along the way likely to punch through the metal skin and impale him as the car careened down the slope, his jaw clenching with each of the bangs and jarring jerks until it stopped, half-canted onto its roof at the bottom.

"Dean!"

He picked up the rifle and forced the driver's door open, looking at the bloody trail the Jeep had left of the tiger as it had come down from the road.

"Okay!" he shouted back, waving his gun as he climbed out of the doorframe and jumped the six foot drop to the side of the slope. He looked back at the Jeep, which was more or less intact, except for the two wheels that had taken the brunt of the slide and fall. Both were bent in directions that were not usually possible for the car. He sighed, and turned to climb back up the bank.

"What the fuck?" he asked Rufus as the older hunter extended a hand and pulled him the last couple of feet.

"Siberian," Rufus offered unhelpfully. "Must have gotten free from a private or public zoo sometime."

"So now we got exotic carnivores as well as our usual ones?"

"Looks like," Rufus said with a shrug. "Good news is that they're territorial, so we're not likely to run into more here at the moment."

"How's Billy?" Dean walked fast to Nate, kneeling beside the boy in the snow.

"Not good," Nate said. "Jack, take the gun and get down to the Jeep and get the kit."

Dean dropped to his knees next to the other man, looking at the deep claw gouges that ran from under the collarbone on the left side to the hip on the right, seeing the cartilage over the ribs through the shredded flesh, the purplish-pink gleam of internal organs through the horrific rents in the skin and muscle of the boy's abdomen. He didn't need to be told that the animal's claws had probably deposited a crap-load of debris inside the boy, that the wounds would be impossible to clean out and keep clean, or to keep still, with what they had with them. Billy was twenty-two, strong and fit and healthy. Those were the only advantages he had going for him.

"We're going on foot from here," he told Nate and Rufus quietly. "Jeep's not fixable."

Nate looked down at the boy and nodded. "Need a travois."

"Yeah," Dean agreed. "Rufus, get the axes, take Nate and see if you can find a couple of saplings. We can use the sleeping bags for the sling. Snowshoes are in the back."

Rufus nodded and turned away, passing Jack as he struggled up the bank with the medical kit.

"Is he going to be okay?" Jack looked down at the mess of his friend's abdomen, his face screwing up as he took in the injuries.

"You're the paramedic," Dean said tiredly. "We'll do our best."

Nate got to his feet, following Rufus down the bank to the car.

"Those were tigers, right?" Jack said, his face hardening as he pulled on gloves and took scissors from the kit, starting to cut away Billy's clothing.

"Yep."

"And we're in Oklahoma, right?"

Dean's mouth quirked a little. "Yep. Something to look forward to."

"Zoos?"

"Or private owners, I guess."

"I need you to help, keep him completely still and straight," Jack said. Dean nodded and moved around to the other side of Billy, setting his hands over the boy's arms just above the elbows.

Jack looked up at him. "I can't get in there to clean this out," he warned the other man. "I'm gonna pull out what I can see, flush it out with the saline as much as I can and then pour the alcohol over it."

Dean nodded again, knowing what to expect. Once the wounds were cleaner, they'd at least be able to stitch what could be stitched and bind up the rest. In the kit there were several tubs of the thick, honey-based healing paste Oliver had made up from the order's books. That would probably help the most, he thought, tightening his hold as Jack bent over Billy and began to pull the shreds of fabric that had been driven into the wounds out.

* * *

_**Tawas Camp, Lake Tawas, Michigan**_

The wide room was warm and well-lit, the daylight fluorescents giving an even light across the examination table and work benches. Bernice frowned as she looked at the form on her clipboard.

"Sorry, Connie, when did you say was the last time you had your menses?"

"It was the last week of October," Connie said, sitting on the edge of the table comfortably. "Finished on the 29th. I remember because I was supposed to be training that night, and that's always such a pain if it's still going, but it wasn't."

Bernice nodded, making a note. "And your sexual encounters were …?"

The nurse looked up at the silence that followed the question, seeing the young woman's neck and face had turned crimson. "It's alright, dear, these are confidential files."

"It's not that," Connie said quietly. "I don't know what happened the next week, Bernice. I –"

"Why don't you tell me the dates and we'll go from there?"

"Um, yeah, well the first was the night of the 29th, then the 30th, 31st, uh … 2nd, 3rd, 5th and 6th."

Bernice noted the dates, her face expressionless. "Who was your partner?"

"Does that matter?" Connie hedged. "I mean – what's it got to do with anything?"

"Well, dear, in nine months you're going to be a mother and you'll need help – we're trying to organise a system of support –"

Connie shook her head. "Look, they were all different guys, all those dates."

"Oh," Bernice said, looking down at the form again.

"That's not – I'm not usually like that," the young woman told her defensively. "I – that week? I just couldn't – it was like – there was just no way …" Her shoulders slumped as she gave up trying to explain.

Bernie looked at her. "Don't feel badly about this, Connie. A lot of women have come in with the same problem. We'll run the blood tests when the baby comes and sort out some kind of assistance then?"

"Yeah, thanks," she said, looking away. "Are we done?"

"Yes, you can get dressed. We'll need to see you in two weeks, for the first sonogram."

"What's that for?" Her brows arched up.

"Firstly, to get a more accurate estimate of your due date, check on the baby's growth, make sure there are no problems for that stage – just routine, really," Bernice said, omitting the main worry both Meredyth and Bob had expressed.

"Can you tell the sex then?"

"No, we won't see that until you're further along."

"Oh, that's a shame," Connie said, sliding off the edge of the table and looking around for her clothes.

Bernice sighed as she closed the door behind Connie and walked through the examination room to the surgeries and offices behind it.

Meredyth looked up as she came in, brows rising at the expression on the nurse's face.

"You look disenchanted."

"I realise that I grew up in a different era to the girls of the last twenty years, but I've never seen anything like this," Bernice said, putting the clipboard down on the desk.

"It's not them, Bernice," Bob said with rueful smile. "I saw a dozen young men over at Lake West at the end of October who were worried they were turning into sex addicts."

Meredyth glanced at him. "The rest weren't?"

"Well, I didn't talk to them, but I'd guess that they thought they'd hit Paradise," Bob acknowledged wryly.

Meredyth nodded. "I talked to Jerome, the man from the library in Lebanon. He said that the effect of this … goddess … or whatever it is, is very strong. I'm not sure how much to buy into his story, but he said that she must have passed close to us that week, exacerbating the effect." She looked down at her desk. "How many have we've seen now?"

"Connie's part of the last batch," Bernice said, picking up the clipboard and flicking through the forms. "We've got another thirty to see tomorrow, and that will be all of them, at least here. Jo sent a message up from Lake West, they've tested all the women there as well."

"And the totals?"

"It's a hundred percent success rate, Meredyth," Bernice told her. "Seventeen hundred and forty-five here, twelve hundred and eighty-six in Lake West."

"Kim says the same about Kansas," Bob added.

"What are we going to do with them?"

"How many do we have in training now?" Meredyth asked.

"Just over a hundred and eighty-five here," the nurse said dryly. "But they won't be nearly ready by the time they're needed."

"No, and we need somewhere for those who are going to have problems," Bob said tiredly.

"Renee said Liev and Ryan are coming back here as soon as the roads clear. They'll get started on modifying some of our existing buildings so that we can set up wards," Bernice told him. "I already told them we needed aircraft hangers!"

* * *

_**East Keep, Lebanon, Kansas**_

Alex walked through the tunnel, feeling the cold sinking into her even through four layers of clothing, socks and thick boots. The new people brought in by Rufus and Maurice had settled into the eastern tower, and she'd been delighted to find several experienced spinners and weavers with them, setting them to work to teach anyone else who was interested. Fabric – clothing – was going to be an issue of massive proportions when the population doubled – or tripled – over the next year.

The all-too familiar pang of grief came with the thought and she pushed it aside automatically, narrowing her attention to what she had to discuss with Aileen and Murray about supplies, storage and getting more people out to the farms in the spring.

Behind the surface thoughts, the feeling persisted. She'd made her decision six months ago, knowing what the situation was, knowing that it would probably never change. Doubting him now, doubting what they had, wasn't helpful. The feelings had risen over the last month gradually, and she wasn't sure where they'd come from, or why. She didn't think anything had changed. They were both busy, so much so that the tiredness that was sucking the energy from her more and more each day, it seemed, could only be an accumulation of too many late nights and early mornings. The sudden spurts of emotion, grief or anger or a wordless, formless longing for she didn't even know what, were inexplicable but so powerful sometimes that she'd ended up spending more and more time in the apartment, unable to eat or do anything other than curl up in the bed and let it out in the dark.

The couple of inches of fresh powder squeaked under her boot soles as she came out into the southern bailey and walked faster toward the steps of the tower. It was barely nine, and she could already feel the sapping lassitude coming over her. She needed to get the decisions squared away before the ability to think clearly disappeared altogether.

The huge hall was empty when she pushed the door open and stomped her feet to loosen and shed the packed snow from her boots. She hurried through the arch to the long corridor, wondering where everyone was, slowing as she rounded the corner and saw a long line of people in front of her, the hallway packed.

"What's going on?" she asked the woman at the back of the line.

"Tests," the woman said shortly. "Been with a man once in the last six months, but we all have to have them apparently."

Alex nodded and walked down the corridor toward the keep's offices. She almost ran into Merrin as the older woman stepped out of a doorway.

"There you are," Merrin said, brows drawing together as she looked at Alex's face. "I need to talk to you."

Alex looked down at her watch. "About what? I need to see Aileen about –"

"That'll wait for a few minutes, dear, Aileen's seeing Kim right now anyway," the nurse told her and steered her into the room, ignoring the muttered protest from those waiting in the line and closing the door behind her.

"You look like hell, Alex," Merrin said bluntly as Alex turned around. "What's going on?"

Alex shrugged, shaking her head. "Just busy, same as usual."

"You look –" she cut herself off abruptly, gesturing to the padded table to one side of the room. "You haven't been tested, so we'll do that first."

"What?"

Merrin looked at her, one brow cocked. "Every woman in good health and child-bearing age, Alex – you were in the meeting."

"But –" she said, waving a hand vaguely. "No uterus, Merrin. I really don't think it applies."

The nurse gave her a sharp look. "Humour me."

Alex thought about arguing and decided it was too much effort. "Fine."

"Are you eating?"

She looked at the older woman and shrugged. "I haven't been all that hungry lately. Just tired."

"You don't look like you're getting enough sleep."

Alex snorted. "I had fifteen hours yesterday."

"Are you worried about something?"

She hesitated for a moment, then shook her head. "No, nothing in particular."

Merrin frowned at the hesitation but let it go. "Blood, urine, and I want to Kim to examine you."

"Is this really necessary?" Alex asked, looking at her watch again.

Catching the movement from the corner of her eye, the nurse smiled blandly at her. "Yes, it is. You can get undressed in here," she said, handing her a thin cotton gown. "It won't take long."

Looking at the gown, Alex sighed inwardly and began to undress.

* * *

_**Church Vaults, Vatican City, Rome**_

They moved in silence through the tunnels and down the stairs, every sense acutely attuned to the slightest noise, the slightest difference in their surroundings. Twice, Peter froze as he heard something moving through the catacombs ahead of them, moving on only when he sure that whatever it was had gone.

The vermithrax – the Thracian worm – was a creature that was similar to a basilisk, with the ability to petrify the cells of its victim with the sight of it, direct or reflected. They were snake-like, with thick, rough scales over the sides and belly and a standing crest of feathers from the back of the skull to the tip of the tail, growing to more than thirty metres and living for hundreds of years. There hadn't been a reliable reported sighting of one for more than a thousand years and most of the lore claimed they'd been exterminated from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea since the taking of Troy, but plainly the lore was wrong.

In the last junction before they crossed from the catacombs to the older ossuary that lay beneath, the young serpent took them by surprise.

Elena was looking behind her, checking to see that Francois had come through the tunnel, when she heard the metallic brush of the scales over the stone floor. She dove to the side, landing on her shoulder and lifting the small mirror in her hand, angling it to show her the uneven ground behind her. The mirror was purely to see the movement, not the creature.

"No!" Marc's roar filled the junction and she swung the mirror, catching a glimpse of him, machete drawn and swinging blindly as he strode forward with his eyes tightly shut.

"Left!" Peter yelled, his back to the man and monster, the mirror in his hand angled to the floor to avoid seeing the whole.

Elena closed her eyes and rolled over, ears straining to pinpoint location by the sounds, aware that between the hissing of the vermithrax, the harsh breathing of Marc and the others, she could barely hear the sounds well enough to get a fix on where everyone was.

"Elena, three o'clock!" Francois screamed at her, panic is his voice. She swung around and reversed the mirror, pointing it where she hoped the juvenile might be, opening her eyes a slit and looking at the floor as the monster solidified in front of her.

_More than one_, she thought frantically, hearing the rasp of scales over the rock. She dropped and rolled to the wall, swinging the mirror in a wide, low arc, seeing another sinuous body moving up on her flank.

Behind her there was a thud and a sound like a steam pressure pipe being relieved, and she rolled forward, eyes slitted and gaze locked to the ground as her ears gave her the locations of two of the juveniles, her sword in her hand as she stepped forward, sensing more than hearing the lunge of the nearer and turning fast, the singing of the metal through the air stopped suddenly as it bit into and through the thick neck. She swung around and lifted the point, feeling it bite into something less than two feet from her and she thrust the mirror out, dragging her sword free as the mirror caught the monster's eye and it petrified into solidity at the sight of its own reflection.

Another thump from the other side of the junction and she edged along the wall cautiously, moving the mirror so that she could see the rough rock floor to either side of her. She saw four bodies … two of them rigid statues, two lying lifeless and headless.

"Peter?"

"Can you hear the others?"

"No," he said shortly. "Francois?"

"I can't hear anything," the French hunter said from the other side of the junction. "Marc?"

There was a deeply indrawn breath from the centre of the room. "No, there were four, I think. They're dead."

"Isabeau?" Elena called.

"Elena," Marc said, his voice raw suddenly as he crossed the junction to her. "She – the serpent surprised her."

She knew what he meant, but she couldn't seem to relate that to the young woman she'd known from a baby, had trained and protected.

"What?"

"Come on," Peter said harshly. "We may mourn when we are out of here."

"No."

She felt a hand close around her arm, Marc's strength pulling her to her feet, pushing her in front of him. She threw out a hand and felt the wall beside her, letting her hand trail along it as she stumbled forward, her mind filled with memories that she couldn't push away. _Jean_. The man's face appeared in her mind's eye and she stopped, head dropping. Marc's arm slid around her shoulders and guiding her forward.

* * *

The tunnel that led down was much smaller than the ones they'd come through, the steps almost bowl-shaped by the passage of feet. She could smell dampness rising through the cold air and she dragged in a deep breath, locking away thought and feeling to focus on what they were here to do.

The flickering torch light led them to the lowest vaults and she noted the long, narrow boat tied to the side of the rocky ledge that divided the tombs from the canal.

"Through here," Peter said abruptly, leading them away from the canal and boat, through a narrow passage and into a much larger cavern, its walls lined with open tombs, bones gleaming in the torchlight in those carved holes. In the centre of the space, shelving and cabinets and tables stood, coated in grime and dust, their contents wrapped tightly in plastic.

"Francois, you and I will remain here, to get the loads ready and protect them," Peter said. "Elena, you and Marc take the first boatload out to the Tiber. Marc, you'll find more of these small craft near the canal entrance, bring another back while Elena takes the texts down to Luc."

"Without backup?" Marc frowned at him.

"We don't have much time," Peter snapped. "We need to take as many of these as we can. Francois will go with you and bring back a third boat while you go down river."

Elena straightened up, clearing her throat and forcing her emotions far away. "It is correct, Marc. This is why we are here."

She picked up an armload of the wrapped manuscripts nearest to her and carried them back through the passage to the boat. Marc looked after her for a moment then turned to grab a load and follow her. Peter nodded to Francois and went to the shelves.

* * *

_**US 270 E, Oklahoma**_

The landscape was eerie, shades of white and grey and pale purples, covering everything that might've provided relief, the thick, leafless woods to one side of the road, thinner saplings on the other. The squeak and crunch of the snow packing under their snowshoes and the persistent hiss of the ends of the travois were the only sounds Dean could hear in the flat, still country. Nightfall was another hour away, but he was already looking for someplace they could dig into and defend when darkness settled around them.

"You see them?" Rufus asked quietly, walking beside him.

He shook his head. "No, but I think there're more now than there were an hour ago."

The older hunter nodded, his rifle held tucked under his arm, the pack weighing heavily over his shoulders.

"We're still about twenty miles from McAlester."

Dean snorted softly. "Think there'll be anything left in any of the little towns around here?"

"Basements, maybe," Rufus shrugged. "It's not just the wildlife we got to worry about, Billy won't last long if he gets too cold and Nate and me, not in our prime anymore either."

Dean slid a sideways look at him. "You finally admitting to getting old, Rufus? Now?"

He saw the flash of the hunter's teeth in the gloomy light. "Might be."

"We'll have to stop before dusk," Dean said, chewing the corner of his lip as he thought through the best possible defences they could give themselves if they were still in the more-or-less open ground. "We'll ring the camp in fires, two watching, two off."

"Plenty of wood."

"Yeah."

* * *

The night didn't fall discernibly, but imperceptibly, moment by moment it got harder to see, to make out the road, the trees that sometimes crowded close, sometimes drew back.

Dean looked at the small rise in the midst of the narrow band of saplings. It was the best there was here.

"There," he called out softly, catching the sense of movement in his peripheral again.

Rufus nodded and he and Nate lifted the end of the travois, helping Jack to carry it up the slope and into the shelter of the saplings. None of the men needed to be told what to do, moving together through the trees to get wood enough for several fires that would last through the increasingly bitter night.

Dean stood next to Billy's litter, watching the timber line, the long, black barrel of the automatic rifle he held following his gaze as he scanned the perimeter. They'd brought what they could carry with them. Humping forty-pound packs on snowshoes was not a fun way to spend the day. But they had ammo, food, the small tent, rated for arctic conditions. They could manage, if the goddamned wolves that had been tracking them most of the afternoon could be dissuaded from believing that they were good to eat and easy prey.

He saw the shadow emerge from the trees, low to the ground, twenty yards behind Nate and the rifle was against his shoulder in the same single, fluid movement of the trigger squeeze. The crack was loud in the gathering dusk and the wolf dropped to the snow unmoving as the men looked behind them and started to move faster with their loads.

A long howl rose and was answered by a dozen others, the song degenerating into a rabble of growls and yelps from every point of the compass. Dean swung around, his flashlight held against the barrel, looking for the tell-tale reflectivity in the darkness, firing at the eyes he saw. Two more fell, the others withdrawing and scattering.

"How many d'you think?" Rufus asked Nate as they dropped the last load of wood beside the fires.

"Grey wolves usually don't have big packs," Nate said, crouching by the central fire. "Family groups, between maybe four and twelve, the adult pair and their offspring." He gestured to the darkness surrounding them. "You heard them, more than one leader, maybe two-three packs joined together, the strongest male leading them all?"

"There has to be plenty of food around here," Dean said, looking past the flames into night. "Why gang up just for us?"

"I don't know," Nate said, shrugging one shoulder. "But we're going to have a hard time keeping them off if they're not afraid."

Rufus glanced at Dean. "Show 'em what the guns do?"

Dean nodded slowly. "Yeah, we've got at least ten more miles to the base, going straight across country. That'll be either a dark-to-dark or another camp, and either way we don't need company." He turned to look at Jack. "How's Billy?"

The ex-paramedic glanced over his shoulder, one side of his face brightly lit by the fire, the other in partial shadow. "He's running a fever, I was hoping the alcohol and the antibiotics would take care of it, but I'm not sure he's responding to them."

"We've been dragging him for two days," Nate said, looking at Jack. "He might stabilise once we've stopped moving."

"He might," Jack agreed reluctantly.

"We can't just sit here and use up everything we've got," Dean decided. "We'll push for McAlester tomorrow, as hard as we can."

"They'll chase us if they think we're running," Nate said to no one in particular, staring at the fire.

"Then tonight we make sure that they know we're not running," Dean answered him coldly. "Get Billy into the tent. Rufus, you and Jack take first watches. Nate and me'll take graveyard."

Rufus nodded, getting up to help Jack get the boy into the relative warmth of the small tent. It was going to be a long night, he could already feel it.

* * *

Dean shifted his position on the ground, feeling something digging into his ribs. There'd been a couple of shots, after he and Nate had moved into the tent.

"Testing us," Nate had said, his voice drowsy. "They'll save the big attack for later – that'll be you and me."

He'd nodded and heard Nate's bandsaw snore start up a few minutes later.

Tigers. Wolves. Monsters. Demons. Fallen angels. A bitch of a bitter winter. _What else_, he thought dourly, _what else you gonna throw at us?_ The thing sticking into him shifted its position and he rolled onto his side away from it, relaxing fractionally as he realised that his new position was moderately comfortable.

A population increase. Of everything, apparently. But it was the human increase he was worried about. They could spread out, of course, nothing to stop them but labour and materials. He thought of Chuck's vision and felt an icy finger slide down his spine. A demon army, the prophet had seen. Marching on Lebanon in the spring. Where was he gonna get the time to build more accommodation – solid, fortified and defended accommodation – with that coming down on them? How was he was supposed to protect a population that big?

_Spread it around, Dean._ Her voice, soft and low in his head. She was right. And Boze was doing a good job with Michigan, no problems there. Who else? Bobby and Ellen? Nate was experienced. And Elias.

_It never should have just been on you to start with_, she whispered to him in memory.

Maybe not, but it had and he'd learned a long time ago to live with what he was given, to pick it up and carry it.

_You deserve more_.

Did he? He didn't know that. He didn't even know if she did … still. Since he'd returned from Jordan, she'd been increasingly tired and withdrawn, and he didn't know why. Just knew it was leaving a small ache, where he couldn't reach, that he couldn't ignore.

The thin synthetic material of the tent let the light of the multiple fires through easily and he found himself staring at the flickering shapes on the wall closest to him. He didn't know how to unpick the habits of a lifetime. It'd always been his brother, the one he put everything else aside for. One job. One duty that had priority over everything else. He'd turned it away from that and the devil had found Sam and brought down the world. That'd been on him, cutting Sam loose, leaving him to deal with what he'd done, on his own.

He wouldn't do it again, but when was it his turn, he wondered irritably? When did he get to have what he wanted? He stared at the outlines of the flames on the other side of the thin fabric. Did he even know what he wanted?

_I do, you know_.

Lisa had told him that she loved him. The words had passed over him without impact, without stirring any feeling in him at all. She'd said it without knowing him, without knowing anything about him, really. And she'd told him she hadn't wanted to know.

_That's not love_. He rolled his eyes. What the fuck did he know about it? He'd never let anyone in, not even Cassie when he'd thought he couldn't live without her and had told her the truth. No one. He'd loved his family with everything that was in him and had lost them. Given up on his brother when Sam had needed him the most. _You're afraid_. The thought slipped insidiously past his guard. His eyes screwed shut. He was. Afraid of the way it'd felt to lose what he'd wanted – had loved - most. Afraid to take the risk of that happening again.

_I do, you know_. Did she? Still? He hadn't doubted it before. Why now? What'd had changed?

He rolled onto his back, rubbing a hand tiredly over his face. He didn't know.

* * *

They came an hour before dawn, eyes reflecting in the firelight and flashlight beams, silent over the snow. Dean switched from semi to auto, and sprayed the shallow slope as the wolves accelerated up it, the cannonade of gunfire filling the night, the flash from the muzzle strobing his face as he turned through ninety degrees, holding the rifle steady and watching the animals drop. Nothing supernatural about them, he thought regretfully, the big calibre bullets punching in and through and killing them instantly, the over-penetration at the close range taking out the ones behind as well.

The pack lost more than half before they stopped coming and the last remnants of the night were filled with howls, receding into the forest, but answered by others more distant.

Nate reloaded, crouched beside the central fire. "Think they'll give us a wide berth now."

Dean looked down the slope. Little more than shadowed humps against the lighter snow, he counted twenty-five on his side. "Makes you wonder how that would've gone down if we didn't have the guns."

Nate stood, walking to stand beside him. "We wouldn't be alive," he said quietly. "I spent a bit of time up north. Ran into a guy working up there, some college guy, doing research on wolves." He looked down at the bodies. "Told me a few things about wolves, grey wolf, like these. Type-species, he called them. All the others came from them. Dogs too. He was looking at pack behaviour. Said that wolves co-operate when there's a lot of food around."

"Like these? Why would they need a big pack when everything's growing out of control?"

"I don't know," Nate said, drawing in a deep breath. "He just said that they were about as successful as humans in terms of apex predators."

"That's – not reassuring."

"No."

Dean turned back to the fire, freeing his clip and pushing a new one in, tucking the warm, nearly empty magazine into his jacket pocket. "We'll go as soon as it's light."

* * *

_**East Keep, Lebanon, Kansas**_

"Well, you're pregnant," Merrin said without preamble as she came back into the room. "Kim wants to see you straight away."

Alex looked up at her, mouth open. "Don't you need to do another test? Sometimes you get false positives?"

"Not this one." Merrin shook her head. "Come on."

Alex stood up and looked around the room. "But –"

"No buts, Alex, Kim's waiting for you."

She followed the nurse out of the room, through the connecting doorways that led to the doctor's small office. Kim looked up from the file on her desk as they entered.

"Sit down, Alex, I realise it's a shock," the small-framed doctor said gently.

Merrin turned and left and Alex sat on the edge of the examination table.

"How?"

Kim stood up and walked to her. "You said that Death removed all the wounds, when he brought you back?"

"Yes, but –"

"It's seems likely that he repaired the internal damage as well?"

"That wasn't 'damage', Kim," Alex said sharply. "It was gone."

"And you haven't had a period since May?"

"No!" Alex looked down at her fingers, curled up in fists in her lap. "Don't you think I'd have said something about that!?"

"Well, let's take a look and see what we can see, shall we?" Kim said soothingly. "Lie down, I'd usually wait another couple of weeks for the normal sonogram, but we'll do a transvaginal and I should be able to see the organs clearly."

Alex lay down on the table, her heart thumping against her ribs, her thoughts spinning chaotically.

"This will feel a little cold," Kim said quietly, inserting the gel-covered probe carefully. "Can you see the monitor?"

Alex turned her head. On a bracket on the wall next to the table, a small monitor showed a shifting and grainy black and white image. Kim watched it intently, as she slid the probe a little deeper.

"There," she said, holding still. "You can't see the foetus yet, it's too small, but that's the uterine wall." She turned to look at Alex. "Everything's fine, just where I'd expect to be."

Alex stared at the flickering picture, blinking as Kim removed the probe and the monitor became blank.

Everything she'd spent the past six years telling herself, trying to accept, trying to find a way through and past was now non-applicable, she thought. And she had no idea of what to think now.

"Are you alright?" Kim watched her sit up slowly.

She looked at the doctor and nodded. "Yes, I'm fine."

"Merrin said you were having difficulties with eating? Were you feeling nauseous?"

"In the evenings," Alex confirmed. That explained that, didn't it, she thought. "And I was just too tired to worry about it most of the time, when I'm there on my own."

_On my own_, she thought, the words taking on an ominous tone suddenly. She didn't know what he would say, how he would feel.

"The first few weeks can have that effect on a lot of women," Kim said reassuringly. "Your body is going through some monumental changes, getting itself ready, growing a new person – it all comes out of the mother. You need to eat, Alex, and you need to eat well. I can give you some supplements –"

"No, that's –" she hesitated, shaking her head slightly. "I'll cook properly now."

"How are you sleeping?"

Alex's mouth lifting in a twisting smile. "Like the dead. Usually ten to twelve hours."

"That's alright," Kim nodded, making a note on the file. "That's needed. What about your emotions? Mood swings?"

She hesitated. "Some."

"It's normal," Kim said quickly, seeing the reticence in her face to discussing the exact nature of what she'd been feeling. "A woman's body releases a lot of hormones at this time, to facilitate the changes that are needed and the growth of the baby – those hormones will exacerbate anything you're worried about, sometimes out of sight, you might feel weepy for no reason, angry, upset – all of it is quite normal and nothing to worry about."

Alex looked at the door. Had the hormones been driving her doubts? How could she tell what was real and what was her body just doing its job?

"Kim, if I've been – whole – all this time, why haven't I gotten pregnant before this? We haven't used any – I mean, it just seemed redundant, so –" she said, her brow furrowed as she pushed the problem of her feelings aside.

"I don't know," Kim said bluntly. "If you weren't cycling before, perhaps Death restored it all but it needed something else to get it working? The goddess walking through here, jump-starting everything might've done that?"

Yeah, Alex thought, remembering Jerome's description of what they would have to expect. That might've done it.

"I want you back in three weeks," Kim said, looking at the calendar on her desk. "First week of January. We'll do the ultrasound and we should be able to narrow down the due date." She turned back to her. "And in the meantime, you start taking care of yourself properly, okay?"

Alex nodded.

"See Merrin for the supplements – there are some things that help that are hard to get in winter, and in our situation; she'll give you what's needed."

* * *

Sitting at the table in the apartment, Alex stared absently at the small bottles in front of her. She'd lit the fire, cleaned the entire place, chopped the ingredients for a casserole and it was in the oven, cooking slowly and gradually filling the small place with rich and tantalising aromas. When she'd run out of things to do, she'd sat down, looking at the pills that were supposed to supplement her diet. Folic acid. Magnesium. Iodine. Potassium. Essential minerals, Merrin had said.

She had a vivid memory of Dean's face, two years ago when Liev had shown them around the half-finished buildings of Tawas. The stocky builder had congratulated him on the news of his impending fatherhood. And she'd seen, under his surprise, a flicker of discomfort in his expression. She'd never asked him about it.

She didn't want this to be a trap, didn't want him to feel that he had to stay if he didn't want to. And how much more of one would it seem to him since she was supposed to be a hundred percent safe, she wondered bitterly? She knew him intimately, knew his scars and fears and his doubts about himself, but she didn't know how he felt about her, about them. He didn't say anything, and she couldn't ask and everything else, everything that he did, the way he looked at her, the way he was when it was just them and nothing and no one else … she didn't know if that was real or not.

_It's real, you know that_, a small voice said in her mind. She shook her head. She wanted it to be, but that was part of the problem, wasn't it? Wanting something so much, it was easy to kid yourself that something was there when maybe it wasn't.

_He wants to be here_, the voice told her and she knew that was true. She didn't doubt that. But … did he want to be here when it wasn't just the present, in the moment, did he want to be here when it was the future, did he want that future?

The voice was silent. She didn't know.

* * *

_**Port-Au-Nouvelle, France**_

The sea glittered as the sunlight speared from the wave-tops, the deep chug of the boat's engines a lazy counterpoint to the gentle rolling from side-to-side as they approached the coast.

"And the Qaddiysh have gone to find this box?" Elena leaned on the rail, staring over the water to the indistinct land.

Peter nodded. "They will come to Lourdes if they find it."

"An' you will take them to America?"

"Yes." _And hope we are in time_, he thought bleakly.

"But these tablets – prophet stones – or whatever you are calling them … they give the details on destroying the demons? The creatures we hunt?" Elena asked carefully.

"I don't know, _chère_," he said, turning his head to look down at her. "It seems that they were written down for that purpose, but no one in the last two thousand years has seen one, and only a prophet can read them."

She hadn't mentioned Isabeau. He wondered what she was thinking.

"I would like to come with you," she said, straightening up and looking at him.

"You are needed here."

She shook her head. "No, I'm not." Gesturing toward the pilot house, she added. "We are so few that we are better placed to research and defend the chapter, than actually look for survivors as the Americans have done. That does not require my presence."

"You are their leader, Elena," Peter argued cautiously. "How will it be with them if you leave?"

"Luc is stronger," she said, turning away with a one-shouldered shrug. "And they will understand, I think."

"Isabeau was taken by surprise –"

"She was under my care, Peter," Elena cut him off. "An' Jean will not be able to forgive me for not bringing her back."

"There was nothing you could've done," he persisted, his hand closing around her arm, bringing her attention back to him. "I don't need a reckless hunter looking for death when I take the Watchers to the US."

She pulled her arm free. "I am not that, Peter."

"Then why?"

"You said it yourself, you need all the experienced hunters you can find –"

"We have enough," he said, shaking his head.

"You don't," she said bluntly. "You – and the Americans – are hunting too many trails."

He couldn't argue that point. He thought of the hunters in Kansas and Michigan. They had a population to protect and there was no way that Winchester would leave that population unguarded, not even to find the tablets, to find the goddesses and lock them back under mountain. He sighed, closing his eyes.

"We will discuss it when the Qaddiysh come."

"That is satisfactory."

* * *

Luc manoeuvred the boat alongside the long concrete wharf carefully and the hunters leapt ashore to secure the ship to the pilings. The trucks were where they left them, parked close to the concrete and metal freight buildings, and Marc and Francois walked to get them, reversing them up the wharf to the gangplank.

Luc came down the narrow companionway stairs from the wheelhouse, glancing at Peter.

"She asked you, _oui_?"

Peter nodded. "Will they let her?" He glanced out through the portholes to the dock.

Luc nodded. "I think so."

He looked at the crates that were stacked from side to side of the cabin, held back to the hull with nets. "Do you think it was worth it?"

The hunter exhaled. "I no longer make such valuations, Luc," he said tiredly. "We had a job. We did it. That is as far as my responsibility extends."

"Probably a better way to look at this," the blond hunter agreed. "The weather is coming down; we need to get out of here before the passes are blocked again."

* * *

_**McAlester, Oklahoma**_

Rufus adjusted the focus on the binoculars he stared through. "Base looks intact."

"How much open ground to the nearest building?" Dean rolled onto his back and looked back down the shallow incline at the others. Jack and Nate stood to either side of the travois, rifles raised. The pack had not attacked again through the long, gruelling trek across the thick snow, but they'd followed, flitting like shadows along the edges of the forest and their howls sounding through the day, sometimes behind them, sometimes ahead.

"Five hundred yards," Rufus said. "Most of the fence is down."

"Think they'll let us across without attacking again?"

The older hunter turned onto his shoulder, the glasses scanning the base of the forest to their right. They were still there, in the gloom under the bare canopies.

"Probably not."

Dean nodded, his lips thinning at the thought of the next bit. "You and Jack take Billy," he said. "We'll cover."

Rufus thought of the numbers and wondered how many had joined the remnants of the pack they'd decimated in the night.

"Let's do it."

They slid down the hill, binoculars returned to the packs at the bottom. Nate looked at Dean. "They're going to try and cut us off from the building."

"How many clips have you got?"

"Twenty in the pack, five in my jacket," Nate said. "That's all that'll fit."

Dean nodded, transferring his full magazines from the pack to his jacket pockets. He glanced toward the base. "You take point, cut them down and keep the way clear."

Rufus turned his head to look at the younger man. "Don't fall behind."

Dean gave him a crooked smile. "I won't."

They shouldered the packs again. The weight would slow them down but leaving anything behind that they couldn't make themselves had rapidly become a less viable option. Nate moved out ahead, choosing a line where the downed fence wouldn't hang up the travois and walking fast. Behind him, Rufus and Jack had the long sapling ends, Billy lying on the stretched out sleeping bags between them, his face white and bloodless, his eyes closed as the ends left furrows in the snow and bounced over the hummocks.

Dean followed them, scanning behind and to both sides continuously. The dreary grey light from the low cloud cover had made the day seem endless, but he realised they were going to lose even that advantage soon, colour bleeding out of the landscape incrementally as the sun fell behind the low hills to the west.

They crossed the twisted and mostly buried chainlink and razor-wire fence line and the last of the light faded into a shadowless murk, dimming moment by moment. Behind him, Dean heard the single shots of Nate's gun, and he swung around, seeing the first of the distant wolves, their outlines blurring into the featureless grey snow-covered field, only their movement letting him pick them out. Sixty yards and too spread out, he thought.

"Go, go!" he yelled over his shoulder to Rufus and Jack, swinging his gun from side to side as he followed them, not even trying to fire at the half-stumbling run, he kept close to the travois, waiting for the animals to get closer and close up together.

His eyes widened slightly as he saw them converging, a lot more than they'd seen through the day, the sinuous shapes, darker and lighter, racing toward them. Throwing a look behind him, he could see that they had another hundred yards to go, at least. The high concrete wall had a single small door set in the side, and it would almost certainly be locked. He stopped and picked off the two closest, turning and running after the men again.

Nate had stopped as well, as Rufus and Jack barrelled past him, the travois jumping and bouncing after them. The machine gun stuttered and a dozen wolves fell at a distance of twenty yards from him. He saw more coming from the eastern side of the base and followed the travois, stopping again a little short of fifty yards from the building.

Dean flipped the gun's switch to automatic and sprayed the rounds of the clip into the oncoming animals as they closed with him, watching them fall, spinning and racing for the building when the clip was empty, his thumb ejecting it and letting it fall as he slammed the fresh one in and stopped again, turning and sweeping the barrel across the line of wolves that was much closer now. It was the most bizarre chase of his life, he thought distantly, the wolves moving much faster than he could over the deep snow, gaining on him with every stop, and more coming, almost invisible now in the near-darkness, his ears straining to hear the rushing sounds of their paws on the iced-over snow. He ejected the next clip as it emptied, thrusting the new one in and grabbing his flashlight from his pocket as he pounded toward the building. A bullet whistled past him and he felt a bump from behind as the wolf Nate had taken down slid into his heels.

"Now!" he panted.

Rufus lit a handful of flares and threw them in a broad sweep, lighting up the snow with a violently pink glare as Nate began to shoot steadily. Dean was ten yards from them when the animal hit him in the back and he was thrown forward and down, skidding over the snow, feeling jaws closing around the back of his thigh. He rolled and swore, swinging the barrel hard and feeling the metal stock connect with bone, the wolf yelping in surprise. Pushing hard with his heels, Dean slid closer to the building, dropping the barrel, his finger tightening on the trigger and the gun chattering in his hands as he swept it across the wolf that had brought him down and those to either side.

He heard the crunch of snow behind him and rolled fast to his knees, his heart hammering furiously until he saw Nate striding toward him, the flashes from his rifle's muzzle continuous as the older man jerked his head back to the others.

Staggering to his feet, Dean backed toward the others, Nate moving with him, the two rifles taking in a hundred-and-eighty degrees between them. There was a single gunshot from the door and Rufus yelled out that they were in. Turning together, Dean and Nate ran for the door, slamming it shut, Dean throwing his weight against it as Nate shot the flat bolts through the brackets.

It was pitch-black inside and Dean shook his flashlight, the beam recovering and lighting up one wall. Nate dropped his pack, pulling his flashlight out and packing another five mags into his jacket.

"Any other entrances?" Nate asked, refastening the pack and getting to his feet.

"No idea," Dean said shortly. He looked at Rufus and Jack. "You two stay here. We'll do a recce."

Rufus nodded and helped Jack get the travois raised a little.

Walking down the length of the building, Dean wondered if they'd be left alone long enough to find the damned susvees and everything else they'd come here for.

"How many were there?"

Nate shook his head. "I don't know. A lot."

"But they don't do this, usually?"

"Not that I've ever seen or heard of."

"What makes us so lucky?" Dean asked irritably.

Nate scratched his head, his flashlight beam jumping around. "Must be your good looks, I never have this kind of luck on my own."

Dean looked at him sourly. "Wow, hilarious."

They turned as they reached the end. Most of the floor was empty, battered shelving lining the walls holding nothing but a few shreds of plastic.

"No debris in here," Nate commented as they came to the corner and turned down.

"Good." It meant there was a good chance that whatever other doors there were in the building were closed.

The edge of the light gleamed on shiny paint and Dean swung it to his left, showing the interior. He grinned as he saw the boxy shape in the beam, bright red and looking more like a kid's blocky toy than anything else.

"I believe the word you're looking for is 'bingo'," Nate said dryly, his flashlight showing the wide grin.

"Are the others here?"

They moved the beams across the interior. Another boxy shape loomed out of the dimness behind the first.

"Two's a good start." Nate flicked the light back to the wall. "We got another floor here."

"We'll check it tomorrow," Dean decided, feeling the tension easing out of his shoulders and neck as they saw the last wall ahead, three monstrous roller doors locked tight down to the ground taking up most of it. They checked each of them, ensuring that the chains that rolled them were firmly fastened and bolting the small postern door on that side at the same time.

"Dean," Nate stopped by the corner, his flashlight shining on a tall white cupboard near the kitchen area. On the door, a bold red cross had been painted.

Dean nodded and walked to it, pulling out the set of picks that lived permanently in his inside coat pocket. He unlocked it and whistled softly, as Nate's light showed the thickly stocked shelves.

"Well, this'll help," he muttered, pulling out a couple of ampoules of broad-spectrum antibiotics, needles, syringes and a handful of sterilised dressings. "See if we can't do something with Billy's wounds now."

* * *

_**Next day**_

The susvee started reluctantly but ran perfectly once Dean had changed the oil and fuel and it had warmed up. The upstairs floor had been cleaned out as well, to Dean's annoyance. They'd have to do a tour of the place to find what they needed, but at least they'd be doing in style, he thought, watching the side-mirror as Nate ran the door up and he started to back out.

They'd looked around at first light. Forty wolves lay in an eighty yard radius around the postern door on the other side of the building, churned snow and multiple tracks making it hard to tell how many others had been with them. The tracks had stopped at the line of flares, the snow marked by their own bootprints but no pads beyond that. He wondered if the flares were a deterrent they should check into.

The vehicle rumbled out of the building and into the thin, wan sunshine and Dean stopped it as Nate ran for the other one, climbing in and starting it up. When he was out, they turned and headed for the furthest building, Rufus riding shotgun, Jack and Billy in the rear seat of the cab behind Dean. The antibiotics had helped, Jack said, but the wounds were still angry-looking and he was still running a fever.

* * *

_**US 24 W, Kansas, two days later.**_

Dean watched the flakes flutter against the high, flat windshield, the wipers sweeping off periodically, the sky to the north iron-grey and louring. Behind him, Rufus drove the second susvee, Jack and Billy in his cab, and Nate was following along behind him, driving the third one. They'd left the fourth one in the first building, fully-loaded. He'd come back later and get it before spring.

The long tracks didn't care if they were running over snow-packed road, fields or frozen lakes, and they'd held firm even in the blizzard they'd gone through the previous evening, their wide base and low-down weight keeping them moving steadily in the howling crosswind. If the Grigori were holed up someplace in Colorado or Idaho, he would be able to find them there and, he hoped, circumvent whatever plan they had for getting to Kansas, long before they could move around freely.

They'd been gone for almost three weeks, with the digging out and the walking and fighting and then searching the buildings at the base one by one. But it wasn't far now, less than fifty miles and they'd be home.

Stretching a little, he watched the snow fall, lit by the headlights. He wanted a beer, and something not reconstituted to eat. A hot shower. About ten hours of uninterrupted sleep. And more than that, a lot more than that, he wanted to see Alex, walk through the door and see her look up, see her eyes warm and the smile he thought she reserved for him widen her mouth, and he wanted to breathe in her scent and feel her pressed against him and feel the weight of everything he carried slide off.

His foot pressed down a bit more firmly on the accelerator and the susvee lumbered ahead a little faster, the heater keeping the cab warm and snug.


	7. Chapter 7 Lies the Whispering Wind

**Chapter 7 Lies the Whispering Wind**

* * *

_**West Keep, Lebanon, Kansas**_

The guards on the keep wall gave a ragged cheer as the gleaming susvees pulled through the gates and Dean looked around in surprise as people came out of the buildings that lined the inner walls, watching them as they drove down the length of the southern bailey toward Franklin's. Bad enough he was driving something that looked like a kid's toy, he thought uncomfortably, he didn't need a friggin' parade to go with it.

Swinging the vehicle's blunt nose around, he stopped it near the entrance and turned off the motor.

"Glad to see you made it," Franklin said, walking out and looking at the vehicle appraisingly. "Told you they'd be fine, didn't I?"

"Coming home was easy," Dean said, swinging down from the cab. "Getting there, not so much."

"Dean!"

He turned to see Bobby walking down beside the deep tracks the machines had left in the powder, Ellen on his heels.

"We think we've narrowed the location of the Grigori," Bobby wheezed as he reached him. "This side of the Rockies, in New Mexico."

"Somewhere around Santa Fe, maybe," Ellen added, reaching out to touch a bruise on the side of his face, her expression changing to a scowl. "What happened?"

He tipped his head away from her. "Just the usual."

"I've got a shed for these, Dean, down the way," Franklin interjected, pointing. "It's next to the arms store, so whatever you've got packed in the caboose can go straight in."

Dean glanced at him. "Keys are in it, knock yourself out," he said shortly, turning back to Bobby. "We can talk about the Grigori later, can't we?"

"Sure," Bobby said, looking surprised.

"Come on, Singer, let the man get some hot food and a cold beer," Ellen said. "We'll fill him on all the details when he's had a chance to rest."

Dean looked around as Nate walked over. Rufus had taken his vehicle straight to the keep, to get Billy to Kim as fast as possible. He was starting to wish he'd had the kid with him.

"Adam, you're on duty, get Jules and Roger and get these machines into the shed and unpacked," Franklin barked out behind them. Dean turned to watch his half-brother scurry past. He hadn't spoken to him since Amarillo and he realised he shouldn't've let that slide as he watched the young man turn his face aside and head into the workshops without looking at him.

"Dean tell you about the wolves?" Nate asked Bobby, lifting his arms and stretching his back.

"No," Ellen said, looking at Dean. "What about the wolves?"

"Hot food and cold beer, remember?" he countered, walking past her and toward the keep. He couldn't have cared less about food or beer right now, he thought, hearing the squeak of their footsteps behind him on the dry powder. He lengthened his stride a little.

"And tigers," Nate added to the pair behind him and he rolled his eyes. Well, Nate could fill them in on all the details. The job was done.

He walked through the tunnel, hearing Ellen's voice but not the men's as they dropped further behind. The snow was still falling fitfully, flurries being pushed around by eddies of wind in between the high walls. He saw Rufus on the steps of the keep and sped up a little more.

"Billy with Kim?" he asked the hunter as he got close.

Rufus nodded. "She didn't give me a rating."

"Too early," he said, glancing down at the susvee. "Grab a trainee. Franklin's got a shed waiting."

"Dean!"

He turned around, recognising the voice, his stomach sinking a little. "Hey, Ben."

"I'm glad you're back, you made it just in time!" Ben said, his voice cracking and rising in his excitement, gesturing inside the keep. "Come and see what we've been doing!"

"Uh, maybe in a little while, kiddo," he said reluctantly. "I've got a few –"

He caught Rufus' quickly hidden grin from the corner of his eye as he watched Ben's face fall. "But you've been gone for weeks."

"Yeah, well …" he trailed off uncomfortably. "Uh, okay, sure, if you can make it quick." He gave in hopelessly, hearing Rufus chuckle behind him, and Ellen's voice gaining volume again as the three hunters approached the steps.

"And do you think he's gonna tell us anything about –?"

He hurried into the keep after Ben.

The hall, as huge as it was, was almost dwarfed by the twenty foot conifer that had been dragged in and set in a massive concrete tub between the two sets of stairs, dressed from top to bottom in lights and tinsel and glowing balls, the branches weighed down with candies and decorations.

He stared at it, wondering how on earth they gotten the damned thing in.

"It's awesome, isn't it?" Ben said, looking up at it with pride. "We made it – not the tree, duh, but all the decorations and the star and most of the balls are really hollow with candles or candies on the inside, Mrs Philps said they were like piñatas, you know where you can break the ball and the candies spill out, and the kids – I mean the little kids – will be able to do that Christmas morning –"

Dean looked down at him for a moment, then over his head to Rufus, the hunter's dark eyes crinkled up in amusement.

"– but that's not the cool thing, come on," Ben continued, blithely missing Dean's gusty exhale and Rufus' snort, as he turned right and walked fast toward the tall, arched doorway.

"Leave you to it," Rufus said cheerfully. Dean gave him a dry look and followed Ben through the doorway and into the series of interconnected living areas that Liev had designed to satisfy the needs of the different groups living in the keep. Ben slowed down, pointing out the decorations that wreathed each of the rooms, specifically those he liked the best or had helped with.

_Rockwell on acid_, Dean thought in bemusement, letting his gaze travel over the green boughs and fairy lights and candy canes that seemed to have overtaken the rooms wherever he looked. He stopped in the double-wide doorway of the last and largest room. At the end, to the side of the enormous hearth, a nativity scene stood, almost life-sized, the group carved carefully from softwood, oiled and polished to a high satin sheen that glowed in the soft golden lights of the room. He couldn't raise much enthusiasm for the subjects, but the craftsmanship was pretty fucking extraordinary, he thought, walking closer.

Ben stood beside the sheep, beaming at him and he looked down at it, brows rising. "You did the sheep?"

"Well," Ben hedged, a little anxiously. "I had a lot of help but yeah, this one's mine."

"He has a natural talent for it, I think," a light tenor voice said behind them and Dean looked around, seeing a short, stocky man standing there, the simple black suit and white collar making his occupation, at least, obvious.

"You must be Dean Winchester," the priest said, holding out his hand. "I was wondering when I'd get to meet you, Ben's been telling me a lot about you. Father McConnaughey."

Dean took the offered hand and shook it, sliding a glance at Ben. "Has he?"

The priest smiled at the wariness in his face. "All good, have no doubt." He released Dean's hand and gestured to the sofa behind him. "I've heard you like a good whiskey?"

Dean cocked a brow. "From time to time." He looked back at the carved statues. "Did you do these?"

"Lord, no," Father McConnaughey said with a self-deprecating laugh. "No, those are the work of Michael. Michael Farino. We were both rescued by Elias."

"Oh," Dean said, nodding and following the priest to the sofa. "You're over at the east tower?"

"Uh, no, actually I have the rooms beside the chapel, along the inner bailey wall. Alex, the lady I met when I arrived, said that there were a few people who would welcome a new priest and the chapel had been empty."

He nodded. "Well, welcome to Lebanon. The … uh … sculptor, Michael –?"

"Michael is the coolest, Dean," Ben said, dropping to floor beside him. "He's nineteen and he plays guitar, nearly as good as Rudy."

Father McConnaughey smiled. "It's all true, a very talented young man. The nativity was his idea, and all the older children have been working on it for the last four weeks. He's really had an impact on them."

"That's … good, I guess," Dean said, glancing back at the figures. He leaned forward as he recognised the face of Mary. "He used Alex for Mary?"

Ben laughed. "Yeah, she wouldn't pose for him, too busy she said, so he asked if he could take a bunch of photos of her and she said yes. You recognise everyone else?"

Dean looked more closely at the faces – Joseph was … Maurice? The three wise men … he frowned and swallowed a laugh as he belatedly recognised Chuck, Mel and Elias. The shepherds were less obvious. He thought one of them was Bobby but without the baseball cap he realised it was hard to be sure.

"That's pretty awesome," he said, looking from the padre to Ben.

"I _told_ you!" Ben grinned.

"Yeah, you did," Dean agreed indulgently. "It's good to meet you, but I – uh – just got back and –"

"Of course," Father McConnaughey said immediately, standing up. "I won't keep you, a real pleasure to meet you. I'd like to talk to you about a few things, but nothing urgent."

Dean looked at him a little doubtfully. "If it's anything you need, you can see Alex or Liev anytime, padre."

The priest nodded readily. "This has more to do with the journeys you will be undertaking, not the needs of the people already under your protection, Mr Winchester."

"What journeys?" Dean asked suspiciously, his neck prickling.

Father McConnaughey's eyes widened slightly. "I was told that it would be you who is undertaking the closing of the gates of Hell?"

Dean's gaze flashed down to Ben, his brows drawing together as he looked back at the man in front of him. "That's – there's nothing solid about that right now."

"I know," Father McConnaughey said in a low voice. "But I can help, when the time comes. I wanted you to know that."

"Have you spoken to anyone else about this? Bobby or Ellen or Jerome?" Dean asked him, taking a step closer.

"No," the priest said, shaking his head. "Father Emilio said I should speak directly to you – and only to you."

"Father Emilio?" What the hell was the Jesuit playing at now, he wondered irritably? "How do you know him?"

"Ah, we spent some time together, when I was younger, in the Vatican."

That put a different slant on things, Dean thought uneasily. "I'll talk to you tomorrow," he said abruptly. "With Father Emilio, if he's around."

"That would be ideal," the priest said. "Don't let me keep any longer," he added, looking at the bruises on the younger man's face. "I'm sure you have things to do."

_Too many_, Dean thought sourly. He nodded at the man and looked down at Ben, wondering how safe it was to leave him with the priest who knew a lot more than he was letting on. "You got stuff you're supposed to be doing, Ben?" he asked, the question coming out a little gruffly.

Ben looked up at him, his eyes widening at the tone, then he nodded, dropping his gaze to the floor.

"Better get on with it, then," Dean said, gesturing to the doorway and following the boy out.

_What the hell was that_, he wondered? Father Emilio and another priest talking about the gates of Hell? And what did they know about closing them that the order didn't – apparently? Or maybe Jerome had new information and had told the Jesuit, who'd passed it on? Whatever was going on, he thought, Alex would know about it and she could fill him in – the broad strokes at the very least.

He shook his head and lifted his hand in acknowledgement of Ben's parting wave, turning for the offices and the kitchens. His stomach was rumbling and he needed to grab something before he went up to the apartment.

* * *

"Dean – looking everywhere for you," Mel said, falling into step with him. Dean sighed. "Alex said you got in two hours ago."

He looked at his watch disbelievingly. "Crap."

"We've got those kids from the last intake – the fearless vampire hunters, you meet them?"

"No," he said shortly, turning into the kitchen and looking around for something – anything – to eat.

"They were with Nate and Toby?" Mel said, following the hunter's gaze around the kitchen. "You looking for something?"

"Food," Dean growled, going to the fridge. He didn't know what he was doing here, there would be food – his kind of food – in the apartment. He should've gone straight there.

Mel walked around the long pine table and opened a cupboard, pulling out a fresh loaf of bread and a dish of butter and carrying them to the table. Dean looked at it and shrugged inwardly as Mel pulled out a knife and cut a couple of slices from the end.

"Fearless vampire hunters?" he asked, curious in spite of everything else.

"Yeah, too many movies from the old days, but they want to start training as hunters."

He pulled a wedge of cheese and two bottles of beer from the fridge and put them beside Dean, using the edge of the table to lever the top off his and swallowing a mouthful. Dean looked up at him.

"Where's Maurice?" he asked, slicing the cheese and knocking the top off his bottle. "Or Vince?"

"Maurice is over in Michigan right now," Mel said. "Vince is training his plus Rufus' last intake."

"Yeah, well, Rufus is back now, so go annoy him about it, not my problem."

The broad-shouldered blond hunter grinned down at him, pulling out a chair and turning it around, dropping into and resting an arm along the back. "Well, Bobby told me to come to you."

"Huh," Dean grunted through a mouthful of cheese and bread. "Bobby should be training too."

Mel shook his head. "Says he too old for that shit. Told me you needed to know about it."

Dean closed his eyes. "Who's here?"

"Apart from thee, me and Rufus?" Mel asked sardonically. "Bobby, Ellen, Elias, Nate – I presume he's back too – Toby … that's about it, I think."

"Where's Kelly?"

"Working out of Ghost Valley with Jackson and Riley while they're fortifying the houses over there."

"What's wrong with Toby – or Elias for that matter? They're both experienced?"

Mel shrugged. "Bobby didn't know if you'd seen them in action, and he didn't want the trainees taught the wrong –"

Dean snorted. "They're both alive, aren't they? Since when did we become elitist about training? Tell Toby and Elias they're both on duty from now on, and send Rufus' bunch over to Kelly for a few weeks." He looked down at the beer, feeling his frustration rising. "This isn't fucking brain surgery, Mel! Whoever's here can handle this crap, it doesn't need a rubber stamp from me!"

"Right you are, boss."

"And quit that, will ya?" He stood up, finishing his beer and tossing it in the trash can in the corner of the room, picking up his knife and dropping it in the sink. "Where's Alex?"

"She was in the office when I saw her," Mel said, standing up. "But I think Bobby was looking for you too."

"I saw Bobby," Dean said abruptly. "And I want –"

He cut himself off and turned, walking out of the kitchen and down the hall to the offices, opening the door to the one she used the most and peering inside. Maria and Freddie looked up curiously at him.

"Where's Alex?"

"She left here about an hour ago," Maria said, glancing at Freddie who confirmed with a nod. "She didn't say where she was going, sorry."

He sighed and backed out, closing the door and looking indecisively down the hall. The main stairs were too busy, he thought. Too easy for him to get trapped by someone there again. He turned around and headed for the smaller back stairs that led around the exterior walls, giving access to the narrow casement windows that Liev had put in for sniper fire.

He made it to their floor without seeing anyone else and walked down the curving hall. Opening the door, he walked in and stood still for a moment, listening. He couldn't hear anything in the small apartment and he wondered if she was here. Even if she wasn't, he could still grab a shower and an hour's sleep, he thought. He closed the door and walked into the small living room, seeing the light on desk as he came around the corner and Alex getting to her feet.

"Hey," she said quietly, her eyes warm and welcoming and a slow smile lifting one side of her mouth.

He crossed the room in two long strides and looked down at her, wrapping his arms around her as she lifted hers to encircle his neck, her face tilted up to him. He saw her focus briefly on the side of his face but her gaze shifted back to his eyes and she didn't say anything.

"I'm sorry I didn't –"

"Sssh," she said, tucking her head against the side of his neck, maple-gold curls soft against his skin. He lowered his head to her shoulder and closed his eyes, breathing in her scent, aware that he probably didn't smell as good himself, but unable to care about that right this minute. As he'd known it would, the unbearable weight fell off him and the deep breath he drew in came easily and without effort for the first time in three weeks.

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Lebanon, Kansas**_

Felix looked down at the brittle papyrus documents on the table and sighed, picking up the flat-headed tweezers and carefully lifting the top one to the other pile. On the other side of the polished table, now almost covered with similar texts, books, notepads, printouts, pens, pencils, miniature ultraviolet lamps, magnifying glasses and the miscellaneous debris of the researchers, Jerome took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, squinting past his fingers to look questioningly at the older man.

Feeling his gaze, Felix glanced up, mouth twisting into a rueful smile. "I was just thinking that the contents of this library could've occupied me for the past seventy years," he answered the look, gesturing vaguely around. "Instead of wasting my time with accounts of agriculture and the evolution of money."

Jerome polished the lenses and slid the glasses back onto his nose, smiling. "And we might be in a significantly better position than we are now," he said. "Hindsight is ever humanity's tool for regret. Let's not play 'if only'."

"No," the old man agreed readily, looking down at the sheets. "These are a somewhat incoherent account of a battle in the desert in Jordan," he continued. "I've narrowed the dates down to between three hundred and fifty and three hundred years before Christ, and they seem to relate to the nephilim and the angels."

Jerome frowned. "The fallen angels?"

Felix shook his head. "No …" He bent closer to the papyrus. "_'In the east, there was a clash of metal as the giants fought the holy ones, and the earth shook and trembled for days. I saw the flashes of light from the great wings and heard the sounds, higher than the voices of children or animals. And when I looked after forty days of silence I found the dead, spread over the sand, giant and angel lying together and everything around them dead, the plants and animals with blood on their faces, all in the sand together.'_" He looked up at Jerome. "There should have been something left there, if the nephilim and animals were killed, bones at least."

"I'll ask Davis," Jerome said, looking at his watch with a repressed sigh. It was well past three. "Perhaps we can find out from Castiel if the angels have any records of fighting the nephilim at that time."

Felix shrugged. "This is the last of the records I can find where the nephilim are mentioned, except in a legendary sense. It seems to be the last time they were seen as inhabitants of the area."

"What about the area? Do we have a location?"

"It's vague, it could be Jordan, could be further east," Felix said, silver brows drawing together. "Why?"

"There is a reference, in the few texts we found on _Gem Shel Yed'e_," Jerome said, closing his eyes as he tried to remember the exact information. "I'll have to get Aaron to bring those up. But there was a sandstorm that wiped out every landmark, every tree and building and oasis," he said slowly, opening his eyes and looking at the other scholar. "Wiped the desert clean."

"So perhaps the bones are there … just buried?" Felix speculated. "And the nephilim were protecting the Word?"

Jerome smiled suddenly, hearing the words afresh. "Possibly. Maybe. I don't know, Felix – are we chasing stories again?"

Catching his scepticism, Felix smiled too, faded blue eyes twinkling behind his glasses. "Haven't we always been?"

The sharp beep from the situation room made them both turn to look at the archway and Jerome backed his chair from the table, swivelling around to head down the ramp. Along the long wall of monitors, a green light flashed imperiously and he stopped in front of it, bringing up the screen and reading the message from Lourdes.

Felix stood and stretched, pulling off the fine, white cotton gloves he used to handle the oldest records. He walked down the shallow steps, going to stand behind Jerome, squinting at the bright screen as he read the text.

'They made it," he murmured and Jerome nodded.

"And they've found the verifications of the Grigori and the tablets," he said, brows beetling as he printed out the information and watched the files flowing from Lourdes to the computers in front of him. "We'll need to start working on these – can you wake the others?"

* * *

_**Karakum Desert, Turkmenistan**_

The desert horizon was flat in every direction, the enormous inverted bowl of the heavens black and pricked with billions of stars, their light faint but enough to show shadow and edge on the rough ground. To the north, the glow of the still-burning hole showed distinctly against the dark earth and sky.

"Easy enough to find," Shamsiel said, looking at it as the three men sat around the small fire. He lifted the pot from the flames and poured strong tea into bowls.

"It won't be easy to get to the crypt," Penemue remarked dryly, taking a bowl and sipping the scalding liquid. "You can be sure of that."

Shamsiel looked at his brother. The black-haired Watcher looked more like a resident of the desert than most of them, his skin tan and weathered from the wind and sand and sun, brows black and winged over a long aquiline nose, the full-lipped mouth half hidden by a close-cropped black beard. Only his eyes, the bright and piercing blue of the desert sky, gave away a different heritage.

"It doesn't matter," Baraquiel said shortly. "This is the most likely location."

The wind fanned the flames of the fire, casting flickering shadows over their faces. They had walked for fifty one days now, across the deserts of Jordan and Iraq, the dry, rocky plains of Persia and briefly, along the cool shores of the Caspian Sea. It would take longer to reach France and all three were aware subliminally of time ticking away. The longer the goddesses remained free to roam the world, the more changes they would make. Ninhursag's power was far too great to be allowed to burgeon uncontrolled, without limits, and Nintu would be seeking her children, the first-born monsters, and releasing them, endangering the small human population further.

"Do you think Gadriel was right?" Shamsiel asked diffidently, his gaze remaining on the burning crater to the north. "Are the tablets safe?"

Penemue sighed softly. "We have to hope so."

"No one has even suspected their existence for a millennium, Shamsiel," Baraquiel agreed.

"No one needed them for a millennia," Shamsiel argued mildly. "And the prophet has awoken."

"That was for Lucifer," Penemue said, finishing his tea and rising to his feet in a fluid motion. "Not for the Word."

He looked across the black desert. "We'll be there by dawn."

* * *

_**West Keep, Lebanon**_

Dean woke in sleep-filled snatches, circling consciousness slowly, too comfortable to move. When he admitted at last that sleep was retreating too fast for him to keep up, he lay on his back, eyes closed, letting his thoughts drift. He was home. He could hear the soft whisper of breath beside him, feel warm skin along his arm and side. He opened an eye and turned his head, reaching out for the watch discarded last night on the nightstand and squinting at it in the soft grey light from the windows. Early, his mind registered disinterestedly, sharpening as he caught sight of the date. Christmas Eve and early.

Every part of him felt relaxed. Six hours and no dreams had gone a long way to making up for the past three weeks, he thought, the corner of his mouth lifting slightly as he remembered the previous evening. Memory brought a trickle of desire to loose, heavy limbs and a sated nervous system, and he rolled over, sliding his arm over the curve of Alex's hip, shifting close enough to feel her along the length of his body.

Ducking his chin under the silky fall of her hair, he kissed her lightly along the side of her neck, the combination of scent and taste and feel igniting a slow burn through him. Alex leaned back against him, murmuring indistinctly and he lifted his head, looking down at her half-closed eyes.

"Hey, you asleep?"

"Mmmm."

"Alex?" he tried again, sliding his arm under her neck and pillow and moving back a little as she rolled toward him.

"Mmmm."

Her eyes were closed, her breathing deep and slow and even. He smiled a little ruefully, shutting the heat and longing away as his gaze moved over her face, mostly shadowed now.

Once he got up, he knew, the weight would be back. It was only here that it vanished completely, along with the tension and the barely-noticed constant grit of pain and memory and regrets that had rubbed him raw through the years.

He stared at the thick, long lashes, and the shadows they made against the smooth cheek under them, a wash of an unknown and unnamed emotion fluxing through him, catching at his breath and accelerating his heartbeat for a long, drawn-out moment. The emotion, and the sense it brought with it, of some inexplicable yearning wrapped up in fear, widened his eyes and dried his mouth. Teetering on the edge of his consciousness, he could almost see what it meant, see what he needed to know, but he couldn't quite and it dissolved as suddenly as it had come when Alex moved her head, and the light in the room showed him the purply shadows around her eyes and made obvious the hollows under her cheekbones and jaw and collarbone.

Brows drawing together, he wondered how the hell he'd missed it last night. He shifted his weight onto his elbow, leaning over her. Thinner, a lot thinner and exhausted-looking. He wanted to wake her, wanted to demand to know what was going on, but he eased himself away instead, drawing the covers up over her shoulders and sliding out of the bed as quietly as he could, gathering an armful of clothes and walking out of the room, doubt and uncertainty fluttering under his ribcage.

In the living room as he dressed, he wondered who might know what had been going on with her for the time he'd been away. Maria, probably, he thought. Maybe Merrin, if the nurse had seen her any time recently. She was a friend of Alex's. His head snapped around at the knock on the door, and he dragged the t-shirt on over his head as he walked to it.

Ellen walked straight in and past him when he opened it, looking around the room quickly as she turned back to him.

"We got some more information from the French last night –"

"What the hell happened to Alex?" he cut in over the top of her, his voice low and harsh as he closed the door and walked past her to get his shirt. "She looks like she hasn't slept in a week."

Ellen looked at him blankly. "I haven't seen Alex since you left for McAlester."

"Well, no one's been seeing her, apparently," he snapped, missing the change in the woman's expression as he grabbed his socks and yanked one over his foot.

"I must've missed the memo that went out about checking in on whoever you're living with," Ellen said tightly.

He looked up at her, the second sock halfway up as he heard her anger – and the implication behind the words – straightening and looking at her.

"You think I don't look out for you – or Bobby – if one of you has to be someplace else?" he asked, his expression flattening out.

Ellen looked away. "Dean, Alex is a grown woman and you haven't –"

"I haven't what?" he asked her shortly. "Sent a _memo_ out telling everyone that she means something to me? Guess the fucking argument with Death didn't get it across clearly enough?" He stared at her. "You thought I cared enough about her to send her in after Lisa's death."

"You wanted her kept out of the vampire thing," Ellen snapped back at him, her patience for the conversation wearing thin. It was impossible to work out from him how much or little Alex should be included in the information that flowed in. When he was there, she was sometimes included, but sometimes not. "And no one knew –"

"That was because I –" he cut himself off, before he got any more pissed. "I told Bobby she gets included." He added in a quieter tone. "What's going on here?"

"Nothing is going on," Ellen said. "Alex hasn't been to the order since you left. And the times I have been over to share whatever information we've dug up, I haven't been able to find her."

"And that didn't strike you as weird?"

"No, she runs the whole damned place, I thought she was busy!" Ellen said sharply. "And I didn't realise you were worried about her, or I would've looked harder."

He ducked his head, flicking a glance at the small hall as he heard the bedroom door open. Alex walked in, stopping at the doorway as she looked from him to Ellen.

"Hey," she said, a little cautiously.

Ellen nodded, her gaze sharpening on the younger woman as she stepped into the room and she saw why Dean was worried. Alex had lost weight and her face looked pinched in the early morning light, her clothes loose and carelessly thrown on, she thought.

Dean wondered how much of the conversation she'd heard, sitting down and pulling on his boots.

"You want a coffee, Ellen?" Alex called from the kitchen, the small noises of cups being set out and the tap running filling the silence between Ellen and Dean.

"No, thanks, hon, I've got to run," Ellen called back, looking at Dean. In a lower voice, she said. "I can see why you're worried but you should've said something to me before you left."

He nodded tiredly. He should've. Should've made it plain – plainer – that he needed to know she was okay, when he wasn't there.

"Jerome wants us at the order around twelve," she added, turning for the hall and the front door. "I'll see you then."

"Right."

He got up and listened for the door's closing, then turned to the kitchen.

"What's going on?"

Alex turned around to look at him, brows raised. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, what's wrong?" he said, walking to her. "You look exhausted."

She shook her head, turning back to the coffee pot. "Just having trouble sleeping lately. I'm fine. What did Ellen want?"

He looked at her back, knowing it wasn't the truth, feeling it, but unsure of how to raise that. "French chapter got the books from the Vatican and have more information," he said instead, sitting down at the small table. "We need to be over there around twelve for the update."

Alex flicked the switch and looked down at the counter. "I'll have to skip that," she said, half over her shoulder to him. "There's a problem with the stores they brought in for the east tower people."

_Just tell him_, she thought, _tell him and get it over with_. Her mouth was dry and her palms were damp. She turned around and leaned back against the counter, looking at him nervously.

"I –"

He looked up at the same time. "It would help if –" he stopped as his words ran over hers. "Sorry, what?"

"Nothing," Alex said, dropping her gaze as the impulse to tell him everything, to just get it out and know for sure what he was thinking and feeling, abandoned her. "I'll … um, try to get everything done before you go."

He nodded, looking past her as the pot bubbled and getting up. "Okay."

As he walked to the counter, she moved around the table, heading for the door and he turned in surprise. "Alex."

She stopped and looked at him, one brow lifted, and he gestured vaguely around the kitchen. "You're not eating?"

She shook her head, turning away. "No, I better get going if I'm going to have this sorted by twelve," she said, the words mostly directed at the floor.

He heard the door open and close, the hiss of the pot beside him suddenly louder with her absence. And the peace he'd felt last night and when he'd woken was gone, overridden by the replay of her sidling out past him, not looking at him, out the door before he could say anything else and a question that was starting to haunt him … _did she?_ _Still?_

* * *

_**Boston, Massachusetts**_

Even through the thick stone walls, the demon could hear the crash of the sea against the rocks at the base of the cliff. It was one of the reasons the place had appealed, the scent of salt and the unbearable freshness of sea air permeating the house, tickling memories he'd thought had been burned out centuries ago. But it was just one of the reasons, he thought, looking around contentedly at the generous proportions and elegant décor of the room, dark, panelled walls and rich Persian carpets and plushly upholstered furniture. It'd taken a lot of work to protect the place from Baal's passing but it was worth it, he thought, lifting the crystal tumbler and half-sipping, half-inhaling the contents. A shame that none of the enemies he'd made through his long history could see him now.

On the polished ebony desk, the goblet of blood bubbled for a moment and he leaned forward, looking at it curiously. Communication by blood was, for the most part, a hit and miss affair. Misunderstandings invariably arose. There was no other choice, however and he concentrated harder on the message sent from the west.

_Passes still closed._

Well, that _was_ bloody fascinating, wasn't it? Well worth the effort. He scowled at the goblet and leaned back in the chair, tossing back the contents of the excellent whiskey before he'd considered what he was doing. No matter, he told himself with an attempt at cheeriness. Plenty more where that came from. An entire distillery actually. Pouring another generous amount into the tumbler, he leaned back again, feeling the heat of the fire behind him as the flames consumed the logs blackening on the wide hearth, hearing the distant roar of the Atlantic storm outside and thinking about the Grigori.

He'd thought that nothing on earth could surprise him, but the fallen angels certainly had. Baeder had said that they'd been a part of Lucifer's army, and had carefully omitted the tale of why they were still walking around the surface of the earth, instead of buried deeply with the others in the accursed plane. The level of Hell that was reserved for those who turned against their vows, who betrayed the trust given to them was not so much a level as the dividing point between the upper and lower levels of the plane, and it was a depthless abyss, the undisputed domain of the daeva who took their job of shredding the souls pitched to them extremely seriously. He'd had no doubt that Baeder knew of the abyss.

That they were still walking around was the point of the meeting they'd arranged through Draxler, a half-breed that Crowley had only learned about in the last few weeks. There were twenty-seven of them, Baeder had told him, plus their children and a dozen or so cambion they'd recruited over the centuries. It was their time, the Grigori had said, the time of demons and domination over the human population that was huddled in its shelters, afraid of the dark and all that lived in it.

_Poetic, Crowley had countered, but what's in it for me?_

_The Word of God, Baeder had returned as unerringly as a tennis pro. And power beyond imagination._

There were five tablets, the fallen told him. Three were of no consequence to either of them, simple instruction manuals for the control of the monsters that God had allowed to be created, his own and those of the balancing creator. None of those monsters were of any interest to the inheritors of the earthly plane. No, it was the Demon tablet and the Angel tablet that were of interest and the power they contained that could be utilised for any purpose they deemed fit, the power of God itself.

_Grandiose, Crowley had commented, privately thinking that the tall Aryan was off his nut._

_Possible. Baeder had said seductively. But they were not powerful enough on their own, and Crowley needed their help, their knowledge, to obtain the key to the tablet he'd already acquired._

He'd spent fucking months staring at the stone, giving himself spear-through-the-eye headaches with no appreciable gain. He'd listened.

The tablets, Baeder said, could only be read by a Prophet of the Lord. And only one prophet lived on earth at any one time. And the living prophet was sheltered in a keep of concrete and stone, marked with protection against angels and demons, in Kansas.

_Kansas? Crowley had stared at him._

Kansas, the fallen had confirmed. They couldn't break the defences of the keep. Their numbers were too few even with the power they wielded. But an army could.

_Precious few humans to be possessed, Crowley had said sorrowfully._

_The cambion can find survivors, Baeder had offered. Do we have a deal?_

He'd looked at it six ways from Sunday and had finally concluded that although the Grigori would probably attempt to exterminate him in favour of one of their locked-up brothers, if he could come up with a stopper for that, there was no problem. The tablet, apart from its use as a paperweight, was not going to progress without the prophet.

He'd spent some time considering attacking the Kansas settlements before the Grigori could reach them, but had finally decided against it. They were, as Baeder had told him, well-defended. His army could beat themselves against the salt and iron filled walls till kingdom come without doing much else. Even with the enormous range of weapons left lying around, bringing down the towers on top of the prophet was too much of a risk to use them. And the demon army could still not cross over the wards and salt and iron to get in even if the walls lay in pieces before them. No, he needed the Grigori to get in there and snatch the prophet and bring him out.

_And where is the Angel tablet, he'd asked politely?_

_We haven't been able to locate it yet, Baeder had admitted. Even the cambion, who could smell out virtually anything, had not been able to find it._

_But, the fallen had continued, once the power of the Demon tablet was released and accessible, the Angel tablet would be simple to find._

He rather doubted that. Nothing worked that easily, particularly those things that were the work of God. But, so long as the power of the tablet in his possession was his, he wasn't all that worried about the rest. At least, not for now.

He looked at the books scattered over the desk. Filched from the few surviving libraries around the world, gathered by his demons, they were exclusively limited to three topics. The myth and thin, scattered accounts of the tablets known as the Word of God. The nephilim. And the cambion.

The texts on the Word were few. The Vatican vaults had been mostly cleared before he'd thought to look there. The rest, he presumed, were tucked away in the libraries of the surviving and non-surviving chapters of the society the monks had belonged to. The demons had returned to Tibet only to find that the mountain had collapsed, burying the monastery beneath a half-mile of rock. That didn't seem like a coincidence to him. He had no idea where the other members of the order they'd served might be. The Litteris Hominae, the Grigori had told him. Begun before Christ's time, gathering knowledge and hiding it. That had been all they knew of it.

The books on the half-breed issue of angels and demons and humans, were a different matter, however. There was a plethora of information on those. Much fantasy, he had to admit sadly. Nevertheless every myth had its grain of truth at the centre, if one could discern it. Both types were said to be powerful, more so in youth. He wondered why that was. Power usually grew with maturity, not diminished. He put aside the thought for a moment, reviewing what else he knew as he sipped the fine whiskey.

The key was the soul, he knew. It was the key to many things. The offspring had them and even in maturity they were more powerful than their male parent. In every instance of their conception, only a human woman could produce the half-breed. Angels did not, strictly speaking, have genders, only a leaning this way or that to a more 'masculine' energy or a more 'feminine' one, balanced as all things between active and passive, between courage and compassion, between extrovert and introvert, positive male energy, receptive female energy. But a demon soul from a woman sent to Hell could not produce a cambion, even ensconced in a male meatsuit. Another little peculiarity for which he could not find a logical reason. Offspring could be male or female. Neither seemed more powerful than the other.

All lived an extraordinary span of years. All were noticeably different from the human norm. All could be killed, by the removal of the heart.

Draxler had been a good example, he thought, considering the tall, black-haired man who arrived at the house a week ago. Not really attractive, he thought, leaning forward and resting his elbow on the desk. But riveting, for some reason he couldn't define. The man had crackled with a dark energy that drew the eye and the heart. The shoulder-length hair had been combed back from an angular face, dark eyes hooded beneath dark brows, the nose curving slightly over fleshy lips that seemed almost obscenely lush in the otherwise sharp-featured face.

Crowley shook his head, dispelling the memory. The mind behind the face had been exceedingly sharp as well. He'd gotten the feeling that the cambion could see far ahead, and would play every angle to suit his own, unknown agenda. He had a good feel for the character of others and he'd been unable to penetrate the mask of the man at all, left to find clues in what he had been shown.

Looking down at the empty glass, he let out a small sigh. One way or another, he would get the prophet, he thought pensively. He had the advantage of numbers, and by the time the Grigori realised they'd been duped, he would be far out of reach, and they would be on their own. He leaned forward and picked up the crystal decanter, tipping another couple of fingers into the glass, lifting it to the light and staring at the golden amber liquid it contained. _All good things to those who wait_, his mother had told him more than once. And so it would be.

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Lebanon**_

Alex waited on the keep steps, arms wrapped around herself despite the thick woollen slacks, layers of shirts, woollen sweater and thick wool overcoat she was wearing. With the scarf wound over her head and around her neck, she was aware that she was almost unrecognisable, but the cold still seeped in somehow.

The snow had stopped a day ago, but the temperatures had remained low and the cover established in the earlier weeks of the month had remained, impervious to the thin, watery sunshine that filled the courtyard now. She wondered, a little uneasily, how long it had been since Kansas – even northern Kansas – had had a white Christmas like this.

The deep rumble of the car engine bounced from the walls as Dean drove out of the long garage and across the bailey, stopping beside the steps, the hot exhaust leaving a trail that curled up behind it. His hand was on the door when he saw her run down the steps, reaching the side of the car and getting in before he could've gotten out. The passenger door closed with a clunk and he looked over at her.

"You okay?"

Alex nodded, pulling the scarf down from her chin as she registered the warm air flowing through the car from the rattling heater.

"All done," she said, looking through the windshield. "Did you find Father McConnaughey?"

He put the car in gear and eased out the clutch, letting it trundle down toward the tunnel slowly. "No, but if he's talking to Emilio, it's possible he's already over there."

"And he said that he had information about closing the gates? Specifically?" she asked, aware that he didn't necessarily want to discuss this now, while they had time together, on their own. She could feel his curiosity, his worry, about her. She didn't want to precipitate a conversation that would lead to her news right before he needed to concentrate on the big picture, though. _I'll tell him when we get back_, she assured herself. _Tonight_.

"That's what he said," Dean agreed, nodding at the guards as the gates drew back and they drove through. The snow ploughs had been along all the roads and the asphalt was wet and black, contrasting strongly with the clean, white snowbanks high to either side. "What was your impression of him?"

She thought back to meeting him, in the great hall of the east keep, surrounded by the survivors Rufus and Maurice had brought back, trying to find places to sleep for everyone, food, clothing, blankets … he'd been calm, she thought, and patient, and grateful when she'd sent him down to the chapel with Jeff and Freddie. He'd had a small bundle with him, clothing and books, he'd said, and he'd hugged it close when he'd left.

"He was pragmatic," she said slowly. "Calm. And he's been working hard with the children since he's been here. He's cleaned up the chapel and held services." She caught the edge of her lower lip between her teeth, trying to remember any other interaction she'd had with him, or had heard about. "Merrin told me that he'd volunteered to help with the patients they had who weren't coping well at the changes – said he was good with them."

"All around good guy?" Dean asked sardonically.

"On the surface," she agreed. "But if he's won Father Emilio's trust, that's a different matter," she added. "That man doesn't miss anything and I don't think he'd be taken in easily."

"No," Dean agreed, letting out a resigned exhale. "That's what I what I thought too."

He turned off onto the narrow gravel road that led through the forest of illusion to the order's safehold, driving slowly but blithely through the trees which looked solid, but weren't, the tyres crunching over the thick, hard snow and pulling up where the road really ended. They got out and walked to the door, waiting as the locking rings clunked their way through opening and the warmth from the interior flowed out over them as the door opened. Sam grinned at them, standing aside to let them through and pulled the door closed.

"What's the word?" Dean asked his brother in a low voice, following Alex down the stairs.

"Between Chuck's vision, the demon signs popping up in New Mexico and the info backing it up from Lourdes, it's pretty long-winded," Sam murmured back. "Looks like we have a target, though."

"Good."

"Only three susvees, I'm guessing you're not thinking of storming the castle?" Sam asked as they hit the floor and crossed the situation room.

Dean glanced back at him, mouth quirking up. "No, hit and run."

"Who do you want to take?"

He looked at his brother as Sam looked over to the men and women sitting around the long polished table, a little surprised at the deference to his opinion. Sam usually included himself as a matter of course.

"Us, probably Elias, Kelly, Maggie and Maurice, maybe one or two of the trainees," he said, climbing the steps to the library.

Sam nodded, and Dean saw the tension bleed out of his brother's shoulders at the decision. He shrugged inwardly. They'd worked together for a long, long time. He could count on his brother to know what he was thinking if things deviated from the plan, which they almost certainly would. It was no big.

He saw Bobby's rather pointed look at Alex as she moved away from the table and sat in one of the armchairs by the fire, unwinding her scarf and taking off her coat. He had to get that clear with everyone too, he realised, his expression tightening slightly as he looked back at the older man.

Jerome looked at them as they settled down and tapped the file on the table in front of him. "Michel sent these last night, the first of the translations of the heretical texts that the hunters retrieved from the vaults." He looked at Dean. "He asked me to tell you that Peter is with them, he managed to join them in Rome."

Dean nodded, feeling a thread of relief that the hunter had been able to get there in one piece.

"So far, much of what they've deciphered is what we already knew or suspected. The texts confirm the existence and the history of the fallen angels that we called the Grigori, giving us a few more details. We also have confirmation that the tablets that were known in mythology as the Word of God were hidden on this plane when the scribe of Heaven, an archangel, known variously as Mattara, Mattatron, Metatron – the 'keeper of the watch' – or simply the Voice, finished them and vanished."

"Vanished?" Bobby asked curiously. "From where?"

"From Heaven on completing his task, apparently. A meeting was recorded in the year fifty six A.D. between the apostle, John, and an angel believed to be Raphael. According to the text which was found in the writings and teachings he set down as his gospels, the angel appeared to him looking for the scribe. John had no knowledge of him and Raphael disappeared." Jerome looked at Bobby, whose brows had risen. "This is why we needed these papers, Bobby. The Church has held onto such seemingly meaningless secrets for the length of its history, deeming them to be too fanciful for public scrutiny."

He looked back down at the file. "The Church texts also confirmed a battle that we found a reference to here," he continued. "Some three hundred years before Christ, there were several recorded accounts of a war between the nephilim and the angels, in the desert to the east of the Qaddiysh fortress. The account we had here was a first-hand one but the observer only heard the battle and did not see it with his own eyes. The Church accounts are eye-witness and although not completely reliable, they give us more information about the event."

He flipped open the file, scanning down the page, looking up at the people seated around him. "This takes place some twenty-two hundred years or so after the Flood, you understand." There was a murmured assent and he looked back down to the file. "The accounts detail a battle of thousands. Thousands of nephilim – the giants of Moab – and thousands of angels. The screams of the dying angels supposedly killed every other living thing for a hundred miles in every direction –" He looked up with a slightly wry smile. "There's no explanation for how the observers escaped this fate."

"I expect a little exaggeration from the older accounts," Katherine said dryly. "Is the location given?"

Jerome shook his head. "Just east. In the desert somewhere between the borders of Jordan and its neighbour, Iraq."

"However," Felix said from the other end of the table. "Geologically and archeologically speaking, we have a possible location." He looked at Davis who shrugged.

"Around this same time, three hundred years B.C. there was a well-known event. A sandstorm that lasted three months in the same region and buried everything there. A number of digs were conducted from the late eighteenth century until 2010 and bones have been uncovered," Davis admitted, with an uncomfortable cough. "They were denounced and ignored as an anomaly."

"What kind of bones?" Katherine turned to look at him.

"A number of entire skeletons, preserved under the layers of sand," Davis told her, his face stony.

She smiled at him. "Come on, Davis, spit it out."

"The first skeletons found, near Al Qurayyat, were between seven and nine feet tall, proportional, showing no signs of deformity. The genetic assay was deemed to be contaminated because the strand contained three extra pairs of chromosomes," he said reluctantly. "Another skeleton was found in the vicinity in 1999. It was considered a fraud and the reports were buried."

"Considered a fraud why?" Dean asked, looking at him. The archaeologist was extremely uncomfortable, he thought. Over being wrong?

"The skeleton, although humanoid, had wings."

Bobby let out a sharp bark of laughter. "Yeah, so they buried it and pretended they never found it?"

"I believe so."

"The existence of the nephilim and the angels isn't the point," Jerome cut through curtly. "The third account of the battle mentions that it was believed a great treasure was hidden in the desert in the area and the battle between the giants – the nephilim – and the angels was over the treasure. The location was a series of caves, some believed that went down to the centre of the earth. The caves were known as _Gem Shel Yed'e_."

"This legend was the original basis for the tales of the Arabian Nights, Aladdin and the treasure guarded by a djinn of enormous power," Felix interjected helpfully, ignoring the look that Katherine sent his way.

"The treasure being the Word of God?" Sam asked Jerome.

He nodded. "And possibly other things that Metatron brought with him from Heaven."

"If it's buried under god-knows-how-much sand, how are we supposed to get to it?" Maurice asked.

"That is another part of the translations that the French sent us," Jasper said, gesturing to Jerome for the relevant page. "There was a legend in Syria, possibly circulated by the same reports of the battle, that a mortal who had been tested in fire and blood would come and the desert would draw aside and reveal the caves," he continued, skimming down the page as he spoke. "It's vague, as are all legends, of course, but it was repeated as far east as Persia and on the borders of China, taking on a local variation but basically the same." He looked around the table. "We believe this was kept alive in oral folklore for a purpose."

"Legend outlives truth in a lot of cases," Ellen remarked.

"Precisely," Jasper said.

"A mortal?" Dean looked at him. "Anything more specific that that? Kind of covers a wide range."

Jasper shrugged. "The legend was already threadbare a thousand years ago when the Church began collecting these tales. Peter may find a more detailed account as they go through the texts."

"And we think that the other tablets are there?" Rufus asked, glancing at Dean.

"The Angel tablet is there," Father Emilio corrected him, stepping toward the table. "That is why the battle was fought there, and why the sandstorm was sent. They were looking for the Angel tablet."

"What about the others?" Sam looked from Jerome to the priest.

The adept looked at Father Emilio, brows raised quizzically, and the priest shook his head. "We don't know where they are, and they haven't found a reference to them yet."

"What about the Grigori," Dean said, shunting the problematic information of the tablets aside. "Bobby, you said something about demon signs."

"Yeah, coming and going lately, but over Taos, according to Michel's geophysical satellite info," Bobby said, pushing his cap back. "Looks like they're stuck between the end ranges, waiting for the passes to open."

Dean looked at him for a moment, thinking of the route he could take there. "The susvees will get through alright. We don't have the manpower to take them on directly …" He turned back to Jerome. "Is there any other way we can kill them – fire, anything – that can be done with some distance?"

Jerome's eyes widened a little behind his glasses. "I haven't heard of anything but cutting out the heart, but I'll ask Peter to get them to look for something."

"We're not going in there and taking them on hand-to-hand," Dean said, looking from Maurice to his brother. "We want as many as we can dead, but worst case, destroy every vehicle they have, their shelter and just disrupt the crap out of them, make them think again about coming for us."

"Holy oil might have an effect?" Alex suggested diffidently, looking at Father Emilio. "They were angels once."

Dean turned to look at her, the idea pinballing through his head. He looked back at Jerome. "Lucifer didn't want to cross it and he was Fallen."

"Do we have enough holy oil left after Atlanta?" Bobby looked at him.

"We've got some left," Dean said slowly, thinking of the ceramic bottle in the store-room at the keep. "Cas might be able to get us more."

* * *

Alex stood up stiffly as the meeting ended, scholars and hunters drifting into small groups to discuss the possibilities of dealing with what they were facing. She saw Dean, Sam, Bobby, Ellen and Maurice head for the hall at the end of the long room, probably to find an office to get the details of the proposed attack down, she thought tiredly.

"You do not look well, Alex," Father Emilio said behind her, and she turned to him, forcing a smile.

"Just tired."

He looked at her for a moment and shook his head. "Not just," he said, sighing as her gaze dropped and she didn't respond.

"You have met Father McConnaughey, I believe?" he continued, turning to include the priest standing next to him.

"Yes," Alex said, grateful that he hadn't pursued the question. "You seem to be settling in, Father."

"I am, my dear," he said, glancing up at Father Emilio. "With help."

"Dean said that you had information for him about closing the gates of Hell?" she said bluntly to him, glancing at the Jesuit briefly.

The two men looked at each other, Father Emilio lifting a shoulder slightly in a small shrug. "Yes, we are waiting on confirmation from Peter but the texts here had more information than I'd realised."

"Why didn't you raise it at the meeting?" she asked curiously.

"That task is not for all to know," Father Emilio replied, his gaze moving casually around the room. "There is a lot more rumoured to be written on the tablet than merely instructions for managing Hell."

"How do you know that?" Alex frowned at him. "Jerome said that all the myth surrounding the tablets was fragmented and questionable."

"The Church texts as well," the priest agreed readily. "But in the prophet's vision there is more information."

She frowned as she tried to remember the details of Chuck's vision, half-seeing the type-written pages in front of her. She had a copy of them at home.

"Why Dean?"

"Death said it was foreseen that he would close the gates," Father Emilio said, looking down at her. "It was why he wanted to take you."

Father McConnaughey stepped closer to them. "The lines of destiny are still changing, that is not a sure thing," he said reprovingly to the Jesuit. "In the Greek Septuagint, it was written that all things on this plane had a balance, an antidote, an opposite, and humanity would evolve to the point that it would not need the guidance of Heaven nor the punishment of Hell. A contender would be chosen then to undertake the necessary trials to close the Accursed and the Divine planes from this one forever."

"Tests," she said flatly, looking from one to the other. "What kind?"

Father McConnaughey shrugged slightly. "The details are on the tablet," he said. "It's possible that Chuck may see more, if the visions continue."

"Or if we can retrieve the tablet," Father Emilio added.

She felt the room shift, as if the world had moved under her feet and swayed slightly. Lack of food, she told herself, seeing that neither priest had noticed. A quick look at her watch told her it was almost six. She wasn't going to last here much longer.

"Will Dean see us, when he is finished with the hunters?" Father Emilio asked her.

"He said he wanted to talk to you both," she said, looking around the room. It would mean that he wouldn't be free for hours, she thought. And she needed to get home. "Would you excuse me?"

Father Emilio inclined his head, and Father McConnaughey nodded, both men's eyes following her as she turned away and walked down to the situation room.

"Will she be a help or a hindrance?" Father McConnaughey asked quietly. Father Emilio watched her stop beside Jerome.

"She will be truthful," he said thoughtfully. "And she will not stand in his way if that is the path that he chooses to take."

* * *

Jerome looked up as Alex paused beside him. "That was a nice sideways solution to the Grigori," he said, smiling at her.

"It might not work," she said.

"But it might," he countered lightly. "I think you would find what we do here to be interesting, Alex."

"You want to know why I could tap into my soul," she said, a little dryly. He smiled back.

"Ah. Dean mentioned that, did he?"

"Yes."

"You're not interested? You have a questioning mind," he said.

"I have a job, Jerome," she told him, smiling to take any sting from the rejection. "Is anyone heading back to the keep?"

"You need a ride?" He looked around at the library. "Of course, Dean will be here for hours. And you don't look well," he added, brows beetling a little. "Aaron can take you, wait here."

He pressed a button on the console and Aaron appeared a moment later from the doorway beside the elevator.

"Can you take Alex back to the keep, Aaron?" Jerome asked the young man. "And see if Kim finished her projections on the possibilities of the success rate of the births."

"What projections?" Alex asked him sharply.

"The data from Tawas and Lake West, and here, has given us a hundred percent successful conception rate," he said, looking up at her. "You know how unlikely that is in nature, there's always something not quite right at any given time."

She nodded impatiently at him. "And?"

"I asked Kim to calculate some statistical probabilities on the pregnancies that will go to term, taking into account any physical problems of the mothers and the fathers that are known. That's all."

Aaron looked at her. "We can go now, if you're ready."

She turned away from Jerome and nodded at the young man, forgetting about the meeting and everything else as the professor's words sank into her. _Problems with the mother_. The phrase richoted around her mind. _Problems with the mother_. She needed to see Kim, as soon as they got to the keep.

Following Aaron up the stairs, she couldn't rid herself of the feeling that if anyone was going to have problems, it would be her.

* * *

Dean looked at his watch as he and Sam walked back down the hall to the library, groaning inwardly as he saw the time. Nine o'clock. He was starving and he looked around for Alex as he walked into the long, book-filled room, seeing Jasper and Davis arguing quietly by the fire, Katherine buried behind a pile of books at the table, the two priests talking to Felix in the chairs grouped to one of the stacks. He walked down the steps to the situation room, turning as he saw Jerome sitting at the comms desk.

"Have you seen Alex?" he asked the professor, walking slowly to him.

"She didn't seem to be feeling well, so Aaron took her back," Jerome said, looking around at him. "That was around six."

Dean kept his gaze on the monitors as he nodded. "Thanks."

"Dean?" Father Emilio said from the library stairs. "Do you have time to discuss what Father McConnaughey raised?"

Dean looked at him for a long moment, debating the priorities. Even if he left now, she would probably be asleep by the time he got back, he thought, the flutter under his ribs back. He would talk to her tomorrow, he thought. Just lock the fucking apartment door and ignore everything and everyone else.

"Sure," he said, turning back to the stairs and going up them. "Let's hear it."

* * *

_**Derweze, Turkmenistan**_

The lurid and toxic glare of the burning cavern was lessened by the dawn light, filling the eastern sky as they walked toward it. The _Irin_ ignored the glowing crater, moving around the edge as they searched from the western side in sweeps back to the village for the building that had been shunned by the local tribe, a tomb built into a low rise, with steps leading down into the crumbling desert earth.

It was still there, the thick timber door gone with the passing of the angel of the abyss but the stone walls intact, and at the back of the sepulchre, the signs of recent building, roughly cut stone pasted together with weak mortar.

"This is it," Baraquiel murmured, using the hooked hilt of his long, curved knife to dig out the thin joins and loosen the stones.

"This is recent." The dark-skinned fallen angel said, moving beside him to wrestle a stone free. "I believe we'll have company."

Baraquiel nodded, working at the crumbling mortar. At the doorway, Penemue watched the steps and the lightening sky beyond. Easier than the palace under the water at Alexandria, anyway, he thought, listening to his brothers below. There was a good possibility that the Morning Star had a store-house under that as well, although it might've been cleaned out before the city sank into the sea. Despite being locked up, Lucifer had increased his power over the last thousand years, humanity's evolution had been distorted and had followed paths it was never intended to take, paths that had opened gates to the accursed plane and sped the lines toward the release of the angel faster than any of them had realised.

And Heaven had aided that, he thought. Castiel had been distracted and unnerved in Jordan, telling them of a hidden conspiracy within the Eighth, riddled through the ranks. Michael was indecisive, unwilling to provoke outright civil war. Raphael was smooth and reasonable, knowing that whatever he did, it would not be proven now that Lucifer was gone. The soldier had been more than worried, Penemue realised. He'd been afraid.

The man who had altered the lines, who had killed the devil, had been a surprise as well. He'd thought he would be … larger, somehow. The thought brought a faint derisive smile. Was he the first zephyr, announcing the winds of the storm of change, or the storm itself, he wondered? They'd watched the battle, in the country on the other side of the world, in the flawless depths of the crystals. At the time, he'd felt ashamed, leaving the mess that Heaven had created to be cleaned up by a mortal – _an ordinary human man_ – while they held to their safety, deep within the canyon. And they'd thought he'd failed. When he'd risen to his feet and stepped across the flames, it'd been a revelation, of sorts. And afterward, reflecting again on the battle between man and angel in the silence of meditation, Penemue had wondered if they had seen the Creator's vision, come to fruition at last.

It was impossible to tell from the brief meeting they'd had with Winchester and his brother.

"We're through!" Shamsiel's cry echoed from below and Penemue turned to scan the desert again. It was empty and lifeless. In time, the animals might return. Or they might not. He swung around and descended into the tomb, ducking his head as he passed through the rough hole his brothers had made through the wall and following them down the worn stone steps into the earth.

The tunnel, roughly hewn and hacked from the soft stone, twisting in a spiral as it descended. One wall radiated heat, from the gas cavern that still burned, close to them here. The other wall was cold, and the Irin sensed that the tunnel had been carved along the fault line between a harder slab of upthrust rock and a softer, conglomerate layer that had fallen in at one point. The steps were more worn to the right, giving them the uncomfortable of being canted sideways as they descended.

Within the conglomerate, hundreds of pockets of gas, rising slowly through the spaces between the particles of rock from the core of the planet, existed and the men who were not really men moved cautiously, senses stretched out through the darkness for the traps that were almost certainly present. The floor flattened and Shamsiel stopped, lifting his hand to halt his brothers.

"The air is thicker here," he said in a low voice.

He bent, his fingers finding a small stone in the passageway. Straightening, he threw it gently into the widening chamber ahead of them. They all saw the stone shudder and slow in the air as it passed through the invisible barrier and shatter into fragments before it hit the floor.

"Welcoming," Shamsiel commented brightly.

Baraquiel looked along the rock walls and the uneven floor. "There must be a locking device here."

Penemue pointed to the floor a yard ahead of them. "That section is paved, this is not."

Shamsiel turned to the walls where the paving began and sighed deeply. Holes of various sizes riddled both sides, some large enough to push a melon into, others fist-sized, some barely large enough to insert a finger. He glanced back at Penemue.

"Ideas?"

Penemue walked to him, lifting his torch to study the holes on the left-hand side of the tunnel. "The other side is unstable. The catch will be on this side," he said thoughtfully, examining the edges of the roughened holes. "Like the stairs, this has been used for a long time." He lifted the torch higher and nodded. "And where there is use, there is wear."

Shamsiel peered past him. The fist-sized hole was eighteen inches under their eye-level and the lower edge was smoother than the others. He watched, unconsciously holding his breath as Penemue slid his hand into the hole, fingers moving incrementally along the inside.

There was a soft groan from the rock and the air in the widened section of the tunnel seemed to clear. Baraquiel bent and picked up a loose stone, tossing it in. The stone landed on the paved stones with no ill-effects.

"Your bravery and wisdom shall be remembered forever in an ode I will compose when we're home," Shamsiel told Penemue as the _Irin_ withdrew his hand.

"I'm sure that will be magnificent," Penemue said dryly, the sweat beaded on his face shining in the torchlight. "But the next time, you can spring the trap."

He wiped his arm over his face and dragged in deep breath, walking across the paving and into the next section of tunnel.

Winding downwards, the darkness seemed to press closer around them as the tunnel narrowed, the torch flames upright, flickering only with their movement.

The chamber appeared abruptly, the steps finishing and the tunnel bulging outward, a spherical cavern that had been carved into the likeness of a bird's cage, thin, fluted columns outlining the edges and joining together at the apex of the domed ceiling. On the other side, opposite the stair, the door was iron, bound and strapped, the panels in between engraved and embossed with sigil of the Lightbringer.

Standing at the foot of the stairs they looked suspiciously around the cave. It would be too easy to move incautiously now and die. Baraquiel touched Penemue's shoulder, pointing at the fine holes that pocked the rock walls behind the columns.

"Paranoid, wasn't he?" Shamsiel said sourly as he saw them as well. The floor was smooth and polished. No one had walked on it.

"Behind the columns?" he asked, looking at the narrow space between the rock and the column closest to him. "The rock has been worn."

Penemue nodded. "Only one of us can proceed past here, I think. There are instabilities in the rock floor that will react if too much weight is on them."

"Do we draw straws or shall I volunteer to show that my organs are not puddling up?"

Baraquiel snorted. "Of the three of us, Penemue is the lightest."

The dark-haired _Irin_ nodded. Baraquiel was taller, broader across the shoulders. Shamsiel, although shorter by an inch or two, was stockily built, with wide shoulders and a deep, barrel chest. Both men carried more muscle on their frames than he did.

"Start composing," he said to Shamsiel, turning sideways and crabbing along the gap between the rock and the columns, careful to touch neither.

* * *

In the desert above them, the wind sighed and lifted the dust from the gravel plain in slow eddies as the sun warmed the rock. Even the locusts hadn't managed to penetrate the stone sarcophagi that surrounded the tomb's entrance. The heavy lids shifted slightly, and charcoal smoke spiralled from the sky down into the coffins, animating the desiccated bodies that lay within.


	8. Chapter 8 A Net for Butterflies

**Chapter 8 A Net for Butterflies**

* * *

_**Derweze, Turkmenistan**_

Shamsiel and Baraquiel watched their brother inch along the rock walls, placing his feet carefully.

"Don't touch the walls," Shamsiel said again. The look Penemue sent him was arctic, despite the sweat that rolled from the Watcher's face and dripped from the ends of his hair.

"I – don't – need – a – commentary – brother," he ground out slowly, easing himself past a protruding curve in the wall. One more column and he would be in front of the door. He stopped, closing his eyes and waiting for the tremble to pass from his tense muscles then crabbed sideways past it.

"Well?" Baraquiel asked. "What are you waiting for?"

"It needs a key," Penemue muttered, staring at the elaborate lock in the iron door.

"What?"

"A key!" he said loudly. "Needs a key!"

The door shivered slightly in the jamb and Penemue's eyes widened as he looked at it.

"_Zir oln vorsg_," he said loudly.

The door swung open inwardly and Penemue looked back. "Voice."

"In Enochian?" Shamsiel frowned. "Why?"

"Lucifer's crypt. Lucifer's key," the dark-haired watcher stepped through the open door and stopped just past the threshold. Behind him, Baraquiel and Shamsiel saw the room beyond light up, hundreds of torches leaping into flame.

Penemue stared at the long, rectangular cavern. A hundred feet long and sixty feet wide, it was full, from end to end and floor to ceiling, with chests and crates, boxes and barrels and huge ceramic jars, baskets and cartons and cases, all different sizes, some carved, some plain, a few of the white cartons were marked with the blue and orange logo of a global freight company. He turned to the side and looked back at his brothers.

"Where do you think I should start?" he asked dryly.

Baraquiel shook his head and Shamsiel stared wordlessly at him.

"A lot of help you two are," the Watcher remarked sourly, turning into the room. He moved along the wall between piles of stacked objects, looking at them as he passed.

Some of the markings on the boxes, woven into the baskets or carved into the stone, he recognised, indicative of the contents held within them. Others he'd never seen before, and he let his fingers brush over their surfaces. Many of the containers were neutral, imparting no feeling, good or bad through his senses. A few were filled with a glow, an optimism or light or feeling of rightness, somehow. And several, he snatched his hand back from, looking at it for signs of the corruption and taint he could feel through the coverings. He stopped beside a large crate, looking at it curiously. The sigil carved into the side he knew. Danyael's, one of the highest-ranked of the seraphim. He'd had a shield, he remembered distantly. A shield that could protect any from harm. He wondered if the crate contained it.

He turned his head slightly, feeling the faintest brush of air over one cheek. Ventilated somehow, he noted worriedly. The air was warm.

Moving faster along the rows, picking up the smaller items to see what was under them, Penemue worked his way down the long cavern, turning at the end. There was no order to the way the objects had been stored, he thought in annoyance as he saw a cursed diadem in a basket alongside a legendary sword from the pre-Viking era of Scandinavia.

Not so much a collector, as a hoarder, the Watcher considered, staring at a huge, woven basket marked with the waxed sigil of Ra. Had he collected them to use against others, or to prevent these objects from being used against him? So far as he knew only one thing had had the power to destroy the archangel – the spear the mortal had used on him. And that had disintegrated as soon as it had done the job.

He walked up the next crowded and uneven aisle, automatically cataloguing and filing away what he recognised, examining the things he didn't with care. A tea chest had been left partially in the passage and he opened it, smiling slightly as he saw the gleam of black metal inside. Never common, the skill required to make both metal and the long, curving knives had been restricted to a few artisans, but the Chinese weapons were worth their weight in gold, metal and the strength of them and the spells that had been laid on them with their making could kill a demon of any hierarchy with the exception of the archdemons, those Fallen who required a weapon of Heaven to penetrate the evil of their essence.

He pulled six from the pile in the chest, sliding three of the blades through the sides of his belt, kneeling to lay the other three flat together and wrapping them quickly in the long cloth wound around his waist, knotting the ends and slinging it diagonally across his chest. He straightened up and saw the box sitting on the pile in front of him. Eighteen inches by fifteen, the wood was plain and polished to a soft sheen, the curling grain showing the maker's skill in forming it. On the top, an oak tree had been carved in a simple, stylised design, behind it an eagle with wings outstretched. On the front, a heavy iron lock with a delicate chased engraving closed the hasp. He reached for it as the torches in the room bowed and trembled.

The door to the tomb, he realised, wrapping an arm around the box and running through the tight passages, twisting this way and that to avoid the containers that protruded a little too far into his way.

"Penemue!" Shamsiel's shout of warning came as he reached the iron door, dragging one of the knives from his belt.

"CATCH!" he yelled, throwing the blade across the room, its slow revolutions calculated precisely by the waiting Watcher, who caught it in the eyeblink between driving back the desiccated corpse who lunged at him and taking the single step closer to the room. Shamsiel felt the weight and balance in the moment his fingers closed around the wire-wrapped hilt and he swung at the corpse, the keen edge of the black metal removing its head. The demon inside boiled and roasted as the metal touched it, and the headless body dropped to the floor.

Penemue looked at the two animated mummies edging their way around the walls toward him, drawing the second and third blades and putting the box down on the floor behind him. He spun the knives, his wrists rotating smoothly, absorbing their weight, the grip, the balance and listening to the faint singing of the metal as it cleaved the air. To his right, the demon hesitated, looking at the black blades and the skill with which they were wielded. Behind him, Baraquiel and Shamsiel had killed the two demons left with them and there was no out. Penemue watched its indecision with a faint amusement.

On his left, the demon either hadn't known what the knives were or had missed them, edging sideways toward him, gaze fixed to the floor. An incautious movement as it looked up to see how close it was triggered the trap and the demon and the corpse it filled fell to the floor, a dozen iron needles protruding from the back of its head down the spine to its buttocks. Penemue looked at it curiously, wondering if the needles had other powers or if the long-dried up nervous system had simply been short-circuited beyond the demon's ability to manipulate the body. He glanced back up to the right, and saw the demon was still hesitating in the centre of the narrow path, staring down at the body on the floor.

Turning and picking up the box, Penemue looked at Baraquiel. The red-haired Watcher nodded and he threw the box across the room, watching Baraquiel catch it safely. He looked back at the demon and pulled the iron door closed behind him, turning to the left and starting to move back toward the others.

Across the width of the room, the demon began to move back the other way as well, crabbing as fast as it could along the wall.

Shamsiel looked from his brother to the demon, stepping back toward the stairs behind, waiting to see who would make it first. He let the knife swing lazily in his hand.

"Take your time," he suggested derisively to the demon. "Your ex-master's traps aren't as forgiving as we are!"

The demon's gaze flashed uncomfortably at him and back to the narrow gap between rock and columns and it slowed a little.

Penemue ignored the progress of the demon, focussing his attention on the gap path, the long knife in his hand held against the flat of the outside of his thigh. He was gaining on it, he thought distantly, hearing Shamsiel's stream of jibes, hearing the odd creaking that came from the corpse whose tendons and meat had long since dried to the consistency of ancient leather.

The demon slowed further and Shamsiel grinned at it. He was ready when the smoke suddenly poured from the mouth, the body crumpling stiffly forward through the columns, back and sides prickled with the needles. The ribbon of smoke flowed sinuously around the wall, flickering toward him and undulating over him. He lifted the knife, the tip hitting the rock ceiling above him and the smoke convulsed like a cloud filled with lightning, the ashes of the demon falling over the Watchers in a drift.

Baraquiel shook his head and wiped a hand over his face in disgust. "Next time you want to try that, stand further from me, Shamsiel," he said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

Shamsiel's smile flashed white against the ebon of his skin as he shook his head, fine, black ash floating from his hair. "I'll make sure of it, Baraquiel."

Penemue eased his way out from behind the last column and looked at them. "What do you think triggered them?"

Baraquiel shrugged. "Who knows? We need to get going now before more come," he said, taking the third blade from his brother.

"No debate," Penemue agreed. "It's a long walk to Lourdes."

* * *

_**Taos, New Mexico**_

Hubertus Draxler stood outside the long ranch house, his face lifted to the gusts that were freshening in the north, rushing down the mountainside toward him, his eyes closed. The scent of snow was strong in the wind and he thought that the next front was already humping its way over the ranges, lifting and falling and picking up moisture as it travelled south. Beyond the blizzard, he could smell other things, almost anything he chose if it came to that, but there were no humans on the long, long stretch of interlocking mountain ranges that divided the country, not within the limits of his abilities, at any rate.

He opened his eyes and looked around the compound, the pupils of his eyes elongating and widening to take in all available light. He saw without colour, and sometimes without depth, if he was looking at something very far. The German had estimated his night vision to be somewhere between that of a wolf and that of a cat. It was a meaningless comparison, he'd thought at the time. He had many abilities that exceeded human capabilities.

Turning back to the house, he walked along the long porch, hearing the conversations in the rooms inside. He'd seen the thick dossier Baeder had on him, although he didn't know where the information had come from. It was detailed enough – the disturbing night of his birth, his upbringing, at first with the woman he'd called mother, then later, with his father. Escaping from those bonds and discovering his abilities at the age of thirteen. Too late, Baeder had told him sourly. Too late for the extraordinary powers that he should've had at an earlier age. But they were more than enough for him, had kept him employed and wealthy enough to be able to travel the world and pursue the search for knowledge that drove him. The Grigori had found him five years ago. By chance, he'd thought at first, hiring him for a contract hit. But nothing had been chance, and he'd realised that was the first thing he should have remembered. Now, he worked for them. They had knowledge. And power. He would leave eventually, he thought, to pursue the solitary search again. But after he'd milked them dry of everything they knew and had sent Baeder personally on his way to see his fallen brothers.

The perimeter was secure. Nothing could move in the mountains with the snow filling the passes and making every approach treacherous. Nothing could move without him being aware of it, in any case. That was an anomaly, he'd learned. The reach and strength of his senses, both physical and other. None of the others had that. It was not a clue to the things he needed to know. Merely an interesting fact.

Walking back to the house, he stopped by the window, listening to the conversation inside. The outside temperature was minus twenty-five degrees but he didn't feel the cold, or the heat, his body adjusting to extremes with ease. Not an anomaly that ability, something most of his kind and the other half-breed species shared. It was useful.

"We have not found a satellite that is still transmitting photographic data, Erik," a male voice inside the room said stridently. Hans, Draxler identified him. Tall, as they all were, wheat-blond hair and pale blue eyes, skin that looked like dough, white and pasty and prone to wind-sores here in the mountains.

"What about the geophysical data?" That was Baeder, the clipped and brusque voice oddly light for the size of the man.

"No, Marilyn has not been able to locate one that wasn't shut down from its ground station yet." Dietrich's deep voice said languidly. Ekhart was more frightening than Baeder. Cooler. More focussed on the end result.

"What do we know of their defences?" Baeder said impatiently, the muted clinking of glasses telling Draxler that he was at the long sideboard that served as a bar, the top covered in bottles of alcohol and glassware.

"They were quick," Hans said. "The central castle consists of two towers, to the west and to the east, with fortified baileys in between. With the weapons we have available, we could bring the buildings down, that is not the difficulty."

"No," A smile was in Dietrich's voice and Draxler could imagine it, reptilian, without humour. "No, the problem is that it might kill the prophet and we would have no way of finding the next one in time."

"Time is something we have an abundance of, gentlemen."

The last voice was female. Marilyn Harrer, sister of Karl. An intelligent and, judging by the reactions of most of the men he'd seen in her company, beautiful. For himself, he couldn't judge her appearance.

"_You can procreate, Hubert," Baeder had said to him, years ago. "You are completely compatible with humanity."_

_He'd shaken his head and turned away. He had no interest in women, nor in men, for that matter. His libido had been completely sublimated in killing and in the search and he had no time or inclination for anything else, particularly not the meaningless and time-wasting physical and emotional traps that people fell into deliberately, under the guise of romanticising a basic biological drive._

"Not any more," Baeder contradicted her, but gently. "The demon will work out a way to capture the prophet if he is not led by us first. And that power, in his hands, would be a catastrophe for more than humanity."

"The upstart calling himself Crowley?" she asked archly. "He is a fool."

"Inexperienced, at this time, perhaps," Dietrich said lazily. "But no fool. Do not underestimate humans because they are not angels, Marilyn."

She sniffed and he heard her walk to the sideboard, pouring out a drink. "How then do you plan to get in, Dietrich? You have obstructed every suggestion I've heard."

"The same way we acquired our scientists in '44, _liebchen_," Dietrich said, getting to his feet and walking toward her. "Drax and the others will be able to narrow the prophet's location when we are closer. We will destroy the castles we are sure he is not in, and take whatever hostages we need to force them into handing him over."

She laughed brightly, a high, trilling sound that was devoid of humour. "These places, these people are not the confused and nationalistic simpletons of a denuded and humiliated country, Dietrich. They are hunters, at their head. Crowley's army will not be able to cross the walls, no matter how many pieces they're in and neither will we!"

"But the nephilim will be able to," Dietrich countered softly. Draxler heard a soft gasp from the woman, closing his eyes and imagining the man's hand bite around her arm, or her shoulder. "And so will the cambion. The warding that guards against us and against demons does not affect them."

The half-breed heard her step away from the man, heard the screak of her heel on the stone floor and the sharp crack of her hand striking his skin.

"Do not handle me as if I am one of your prostitutes, Dietrich," she said in a very low voice.

The click of her heels was audible to Draxler all the way to her room.

In the large living room, Erik exhaled. "Please, watch your temper, Dietrich. We have a long way to go."

"Tell her to be more respectful of her elders and I will not need to," the other man said without inflection.

"You think the half-breeds will be able to get in undetected?"

"Not undetected, no," Hans clarified. "But with subterfuge, yes."

"Why would they allow them into their strongholds?" Erik demanded.

"Because they have been to see the Qaddiysh," Dietrich said, dropping back to the sofa, the ice in his drink tinkling against the glass. "And they do not know if the nephilim they meet are the children of the Watchers – or the children of the Grigori."

_Wolves in sheep's clothing_, Draxler considered. It was a reasonable plan. Provided the hunters had not met the nephilim in Jordan. One of them had been the vessel of Lucifer, he knew. And another had killed the Morning Star in single combat. That alone made them adversaries that demanded a certain respect. He did not think the Grigori were inclined to grant that respect.

Turning away from the window, he moved silently along the porch and let himself into the back of the house, leaving his coat and boots to drip off in the mud-room. If these three failed, there would be the others, he thought, ghosting through the house to his room. He would be interested to watch it play out.

* * *

_**West Keep, Lebanon**_

The alarm went off at eight, its strident beeping shattering his sleep and blasting the fragments of the dream away. Dean groaned, his left hand slapping at the machine on the nightstand and silencing it as he swept his right across the bed beside him, feeling cool, empty sheet where he'd been expecting warm, smooth skin. Eyes opening resentfully in the morning light flooding the bedroom, he looked first to the other side of the bed and then around the room, lifting a hand and rubbing it over his face as he realised he was alone.

He'd gotten in, about as expected, around one. Bone-tired, his head aching from the thirteen hours of talk and planning and working on the details, first with Bobby and Maurice and Ellen and Sam, then with the priests. He'd have done better to have worked it out on his own, he'd thought, and then gone through the details with the others when he had it down.

She'd left a light on and he'd slunk into the bed, hearing the soft whisper of her breath, his heart sinking a little as he also heard the steadiness of it. Sound asleep. Deeply asleep. Again.

Inching across the smooth sheet, he'd heard her soft sigh as he fitted himself against her, and the headache and the tension and the nagging sense of worry that something had been forgotten or left undone, unthought of, had disappeared completely, his arms curving around her and a feeling of peace cloaking him as he'd closed his eyes.

He'd slept deeply too, he thought. Deep enough that her getting up hadn't woken him – which was pretty damned deep. Listening to the silence of the apartment, he thought she'd gone out somewhere. Another opportunity missed. Another chance gone. He levered himself onto his elbows, frowning at the door as he reviewed that thought. Chance for what? To _not_ to tell her some more of what he was convincing himself that he _wasn't_ feeling?

How long was he going to play this game? This I-don't-know-what-you're-talking-about game with himself? Pushing back the covers, he rolled out of the bed and walked down the hall to the bathroom, reaching for the shower taps and flipping them on. He leaned on the sink and stared at himself in the mirror above it as he waited for the water to heat up.

The face that stared back at him looked more or less the same as it had for the last few years. More lines. More shadows. The same steadfast worry in the back of his eyes that he tried not to see when he shaved. Not just Sam anymore. Sam and the world. Now he had whole towns to worry about personally. People he knew. People he cared about. And … a woman who took all that worry and vanished it … just by being there.

Steam curled into his peripheral vision above the shower door and he let out his breath, turning to the barrage of hot water and letting it hammer him into a kind of insensibility.

The memory of Lisa's face, her disappointment when he hadn't responded to what she'd said, chewed at him. The deeper disappointment later when he'd told her that he didn't.

"_This is exactly what you wanted. No one to hold you back, Dean. No one to make demands on you. No one to make you feel bad for not loving back."_

He leaned against the tiled wall in front of him, swallowing the sudden rise of bile as that memory flooded him. It hadn't been true, not the way she'd meant it. But it had as well. And he'd hated himself for letting her see it. And he'd hated her, a little, for throwing it back at him when he'd had no choice in what he'd had to do.

Straightening up, he tipped his face to the water, eyes screwed shut. He didn't even know what the hell he was talking about – _thinking_ about, since he definitely wasn't talking about it – he thought. He'd kidded himself once and that had stabbed him. He didn't know what it looked like or felt like … _yeah, you do_, the small voice in his mind murmured contradictorily. _You know what it looked like, what it felt like, what it sounded like. The house in Lawrence and John and Mary Winchester and a whole world of it then. You know. You're just afraid it's not for you._

_And did she? Still?_

He couldn't blame her if she didn't. He'd hardly been around. Hadn't said anything. Had come and gone as if – as if – it hadn't _mattered_ to him, whether she was there or not. Twisting the taps off, he stepped out and grabbed a towel, aware that his pulse had sped up and an urgent, formless nervousness was filling him.

Running water into the sink, he scraped carelessly at the stubble, wincing as the keen blade nicked him under the jaw, and dropping the razor into the water swirling around the drain. _Slow down_, he told himself. _Just … be cool_.

But he was rushing again when he got back to the bedroom, throwing clothes around, looking for clean ones, socks getting stuck on damp skin and every pair of jeans mysteriously stained with oil, along the sides where he usually wiped his hands if no rag was close enough.

He stopped as he came into the kitchen, frozen in place by the sight of the brightly wrapped present sitting in the middle of the table, a note displayed prominently on top of it.

_Fuck. No._

It was Christmas, he'd known that, had seen the preparations, had recognised the date the previous day, had been aware of all those things and had still managed to put it so far out of his head that it'd never even occurred to him that she might do something like this.

Walking warily to the table, he picked up the note, reading through it. _Errands. Back soon. Merry Christmas. Hope you like it. Love, Alex_.

_Just … _love, Alex_. Like someone you care about_. He pushed the thought aside and picked up the gift. It was bulky and heavy. Not very heavy, he thought, holding it in one hand. Heavy enough. Soft.

He ripped the paper off and stared at the almost-familiar folds in his hands. He was holding a jacket. Soft, heavy leather. Dark brown. Straight cut with a collar high enough to shield his neck. Where the hell had she found it? He shook it out and pulled it on, the smell of leather enveloping him instantly. It fit. Better than his father's ever had, he thought irrelevantly. It was warm, double-lined on the inside. Putting his hands into the wide pockets, he felt a piece of paper and pulled it out, reading it.

_I do, you know_, it said. _I do love you_.

He dropped into the chair behind him, rubbing both hands over his face, crunching them into fists and holding them there. _There if you want it_, the small voice said in the disbelieving silence in his mind.

* * *

_**Caspian Sea, Turkmenistan**_

"Could save ourselves a couple of hundred miles walk if we cross here instead of going around," Shamsiel said, looking at the expanse of dark blue water in front of them.

"A few days? Do you think that'll matter much?" Baraquiel said, looking along the snow-patched coastline at the steel boats that were still moored against the small harbour's stone breakwater. Ice was already forming, growing out from the shore, the boats glittering in the thin light.

Penemue drank his tea in silence. By a rough calculation, and presuming that nothing untoward happened, which seemed highly unlikely, it would take them four or five weeks to cross Europe in the middle of winter. The coldest winter he'd seen for some time, he amended dourly to himself. They might reach France by spring. The Atlantic would troublesome as it always was in the changeover seasons. Then from the coast to the centre of the country on the other side. They would be there by summer. At the very earliest. If nothing at all happened to slow them down.

The flutter of wings echoed from the stone walls and dissipated over the water. The men turned to see the angel, standing with the sun behind him, looking thoughtfully around. On the sea wall, a gull blinked at him, wings lifting slightly in confused alarm.

"There you are," Balthazar said brightly. "That box you're carrying really does distort your images."

"Balthazar, it's been a long time," Penemue said cautiously, wondering what the angel was doing here.

Tilting his head slightly, Balthazar smiled as he saw the wariness in all three faces. "Relax, Heaven has no idea of what you're pursuing. Castiel sent me to get you to Lourdes."

"Why Lourdes?" Baraquiel asked abruptly. "You can take us to Kansas."

The angel's gaze cut away to the sea. "The situation in Heaven is a little delicate right now," he said slowly. "And Cas felt that the timing could be managed more effectively if you were closer, but not that close."

Penemue's brows drew together. "Someone's watching us? You're waiting to see what they will do to affect this new balance of power?"

Balthazar turned and looked at him, eyes narrowed. "You were always frighteningly astute, Penemue."

"Manipulating the humans will not endear them to Heaven, Balthazar," Baraquiel said gravely. "It will backfire if they know that help was given in drips instead of whole-heartedly."

"The humans are dealing with their own problems," Balthazar told them, with a careless shrug. "And if we do not discover the source of the conspiracy before it's too late then that will only add to their difficulties." He looked around the cold shore again and shivered. "Now, will you come or would you prefer the four thousand mile trek through winter?"

Glancing at each other, the Qaddiysh got to their feet and walked to him, standing close together. Balthazar reached out and closed his eyes and the gull croaked in surprise and hopped from the wall, wings spreading out as it flew away from the empty quay.

* * *

_**Cascade d'Ilhéou, Pyrenees Mountains**_

The tight rocky valley was filled with the soft roar of the falls, and blanketed in white. Penemue looked around as Balthazar released them, brows rising.

"I thought you said Lourdes?"

"The stronghold is a little way into the mountains," Balthazar said with a vague gesture. "And this is the only landmark they've given me."

"So, where is it?" Shamsiel turned around.

"A quarter mile to the south-east, I was told," Balthazar said. "There will be someone to meet you."

The beating of wings was almost inaudible beneath the sound of the rushing water and Baraquiel shrugged as the angel disappeared. "That is south-east," he said, pointing to the narrow end of the valley. "From memory, there was a walking track that led here, and through the peaks."

"A lot of good that will do us," Shamsiel pointed out, stepping into the deep powder that covered the ground.

* * *

_**Christmas Day, West Keep, Lebanon**_

The keep was full of people and Dean walked through them, captured now and then, smiling and talking his way out of longer conversations as he searched for Alex. He saw his brother, by the fire with Bobby and Ellen and Father Emilio, catching his eye and giving him a slight grin while Vince walked beside him, telling him about the last batch of trainees, aware that he was nodding and murmuring in the right places without having taken in a word.

"Gimme a minute, Vince," he said to the other man, stopping him mid-sentence. Vince blinked and nodded as Dean walked away.

He had a gift for Ben, a rare find. He couldn't see Alex anywhere in the crowded rooms but from the music playing at the other end of the interconnected living areas, he had a pretty good idea where the boy was.

Seated around the nativity, several teenagers and more than twenty children sat around two young men, listening as they played their guitars, the melodies almost duelling in the battle to see which of them had the greater mastery over the strings. Rudy he recognised, the singer's long dark hair and tan skin easily identifiable even at a distance, the younger man who sat beside him he didn't.

He could guess who he was, though. Michael, the talented sculptor and friend of Father McConnaughey's. Ben had been right, he realised, head inclined as he listened to the intricately played music. The kid was almost as good as Rudy, and it was probably only the years between them that was making the difference. Both musicians had an instinctive feel for the notes, the tension in the music and a soaring talent in adding their own embellishments to the well-known ballad.

"Good, isn't he?" Sam said as he came up behind him.

"They both are," Dean acknowledged. "Make a difference to long winter nights here."

Sam laughed softly in agreement. "And the long summer ones."

"You seen Alex anywhere down here, Sam?" Dean turned to look at him. Sam shook his head.

"I haven't seen her since last night," he said, smiling at Ben as the boy made his way to them. "Merry Christmas, Ben."

"Hi Sam, Merry Christmas," he said, smiling shyly as he handed a small, wrapped gift to Dean. "I thought you'd like this."

Dean ducked his head, taking it and pulling the slightly larger gift from his pocket and handing it over to Ben. "Thanks. Merry Christmas."

"Is it for me?" Ben's eyes widened as he looked down at the clumsily wrapped elongated shape.

"Yep." Dean pulled the wrapping from the square, plastic cover and felt his brows rise. "Where'd you get this?"

Ben grinned up at him. "Rudy found it for me, on the last run they did. Do you like it?"

"Hell, yeah, I love it," Dean said, looking down at the flat black cover. Barely visible until tilted to the light, the embossed letters just gave the band's name, nothing else. He knew what it was. The collection had been on his must-get list for years before the world fell to pieces.

"Guess I'll have to stick a CD player in the Impala now," he said with a half-rueful smile.

Ben tore the paper from his present and the brothers heard his breath shoot out in a whistling exhale.

"It's ceramic. Doesn't need much in the way of sharpening," Dean said, looking down at the long, white-bladed knife. "Won't corrode, non-magnetic and non-conductive."

He felt Sam's gaze on him and glanced at his brother, shrugging. "Just a piece for the kit."

"It's awesome, Dean," Ben said, throwing an arm around his ribs as he kept staring at the knife. Dean hugged him back a little awkwardly.

"Yeah, well, look after it. They're impossible to find now, and a long way past impossible to make."

"I will!" Ben shot off suddenly, the blade held against his side to avoid stabbing anyone as he went to show his friends.

Sam watched him go, and turned to his brother. "Where did you find it?"

"Chicago," Dean said, looking around the room. "Specialty store that was still standing when I met with Death."

"I remember Dad had a couple in the trunk, but I thought he took them for the truck?"

Dean nodded distractedly. "Yeah, I got one back. Good for cutting through pretty much anything, harder than a steel blade."

"You okay?"

Hearing the note of concern, Dean looked back at Sam. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"You look … agitated," Sam commented mildly. "What's going on?"

For a moment, Dean was tempted to tell him, tell him and ask what he thought. The impulse disappeared as he realised that he didn't know what to say. He shook his head. "Nothing, I just want to find Alex. I'll see you later?"

"Yeah, count on it," Sam said, watching him disappear into the crowd.

When he'd heard what his brother had done to bring her back, he'd thought that maybe, finally, Dean had found someone that he could let in. But watching him, watching them, over the months that followed, he thought he'd been mistaken. Dean was relaxed around her, more so than he'd seen his brother with anyone else, but he didn't talk about her, and he hadn't slowed down or changed what he'd been doing since they'd been together. When he'd asked him not to let Alex see him as a monster, he'd wondered if the relationship was as strong as he'd thought. He and Ellen and Bobby had watched the hunter, looking for clues about his feelings and finding none. Alex was in his life, but none of them had gotten the sense that she meant any more to him that Lisa had.

Except for what he'd done to bring her back.

He was on edge, Sam thought, catching another glimpse of him as he worked his way back through the crowd to the hall. About Alex, for some reason. He watched a moment longer and lost sight of him, shrugging inwardly. He didn't think Dean would talk to him about it even under torture. It wasn't how his brother was wired.

* * *

_Office_, Dean thought, threading his way through the tightly packed corridor. She'd be in the office.

He had no idea of what he was going to say when he finally found her. What he could say. What he wanted to say. He thought he'd just start with the jacket and see where it went from there.

Reaching the door, he put his hand over the knob and stopped, looking down at it. He felt more nervous now than he had when she'd first told him, he realised, feeling the flutter under his ribs and the clamminess of his hands. Then, it'd been rejection that had worried him. What the hell was he scared of now? He decided he didn't want to know, turning the knob and clearing his throat as he pushed the door open.

The office was empty.

He looked around, just to be sure about it, but it remained stubbornly empty. Pulling the door closed, he leaned back against the wall, the flutter up near his throat now and his mouth dry.

"Merry Christmas, Dean."

He opened his eyes and looked around at Ellen, nodding to her and Bobby who stood slightly behind her, both looking at him questioningly.

"Uh … yeah," he managed to say. "You too."

"You okay?" Bobby asked gruffly, his face half-shadowed by the cap, but the tone indicating that he didn't think Dean was.

"Fine," Dean said, straightening up. "I was looking for Alex."

"I saw her heading up the stairs a while ago," Ellen said, glancing at Bobby.

"Great," Dean said, forcing a smile. "I see you later."

"Not like you to turn down a big feed?" Ellen looked at him in surprise.

He looked at his watch and swallowed a groan. "Nah, I'll be back down," he said, walking past them. "Just got … a … thing …"

He let the words trail off as he forced his way back down the narrow corridor and into the hall, aware of the scent of roast and gravy, vegetables and pie and bread spreading slowly through the lower levels, his stomach complaining about missed dinner, breakfast and now another meal, his mouth filling uncomfortably with saliva at the appetising smells.

_Later_, he told himself, reaching the stairs. Right now there was only one thing he wanted to do, one thing he needed to do and if he couldn't get through it soon, he didn't think he'd be able to later. _Just tell her and talk it out and find out one way or the other_, he thought, his feet pounding the stairs as he accelerated up them.

He ignored the well-wishes of those he passed, leaving heads turning to look after him as he shot around the curving landings and kept going, dodging those coming down and apexing the corners wherever he could. He hit the floor that held their apartment and slowed down as he walked down the hallway, forcing himself to not think about where he was going to try next if she wasn't here either.

At the apartment's door, he hesitated, listening, unable to hear anything. Pushing the door open, he walked in and closed it, a long stride taking him through the short hall.

Alex looked up as he came through the living room and into the kitchen. She sat at the kitchen table, her face pale and tense, and he stopped at the other end, licking his lips.

"I wanted to –"

"Dean, I have to te –"

"I really need to get this –"

"Could I just say this fir –"

He stopped and looked at her, nodding reluctantly. "Sorry, go ahead."

"I'm pregnant," she said flatly.

For a moment, the past and the present collided and he felt a sense of disbelief that this exact moment could be playing out again. Every thought that had been churning around his head for the last two days vanished without a trace as he tried to understand how the past had doubled back on him. It wasn't Lisa, standing there at the end of the table. It wasn't Chitaqua or the past. It was Alex. And here. And now. And he still couldn't make himself take it in.

Alex looked at him, her pulse accelerating and her breathing constricting. She'd gone over and over this moment in her mind and the cool, expressionless stare she saw wasn't how she'd envisaged his reaction. She'd thought he might be surprised, or angry, or …something else, but not this.

She made a vague gesture, her gaze dropping to the table. "This wasn't how I wanted to tell you," she said uncomfortably. "Kim thinks Death restored me – restored everything, and the goddess probably kicked it all back into working order when she went through Kansas," she continued, not looking at him, hearing the welling silence in the room between words, a silence that was making it hard to draw a breath to keep talking. But the silence was worse and for the first time in her life she needed to fill it, to keep it filled so she wouldn't have to listen to it. "I just wanted you to know that it – it doesn't – you know – it doesn't – if you don't want that – that's –"

She stopped abruptly, her throat too tight to continue, her fingers curling tightly around the back of the chair she stood behind. She wasn't sure he was even listening to her.

Dean heard the words, heard the increasing discomfort in her voice, saw her shoulders hunch a little inward, saw her knuckles whiten on the chair back. He knew those tells. Knew what they meant. Knew how fucking bad it was he was standing here not saying a goddamned thing. He couldn't think of a single thing to say. Not a fucking word.

"It explains why I felt so tired all the time," she tried again, forcing the words out past the horrifying thought of bursting into tears in front of him. "And – well, all the other stuff …"

She looked up, past him to the hall. "I'm really – I think I'll just …" She let the words trail off, clamping her teeth together and forcing the pricking behind her eyes to remain there as she walked around the table and out of the kitchen.

He heard her light steps through the living room and down the hall, heard the bedroom door open and shut and the noise snapped him back to the present as thoroughly as a slap.

"Alex," he muttered, turning sharply and following her to the bedroom. He turned the knob and pushed. Nothing happened. He hadn't even realised there was a fucking lock on that door. They'd never used it.

Leaning against the panels, he closed his eyes. What the fuck was he doing? What had he done?

Lisa.

_I don't. _

His decision.

_Get. _

His doubts.

_A second. _

Duty.

_Chance. _

Responsibility.

_I can't. _

I will be there.

_Take that. _

Boom.

_Again. _

BOOM.

_No. _

_BOOM!._

_I don't. _

_I can't_ lose you.

He lifted a hand and knocked loudly.

"Alex."

* * *

Inside the room, Alex looked at the door. Hormones, Kim had said. They would amplify everything, turn the volume up to maximum and they were perfectly normal. But making a scene was not normal. Bursting into wild and uncontrolled sobs, which she could feel like a thunderstorm in her head and chest and throat – that was not _normal_. Freaking them both out with that level of emotion was not normal and wouldn't help. She'd told him and she still didn't know what he felt and it felt as if she'd been cut open and left to bleed out. She curled up on the bed and buried her face in the pillows and tried not to make a sound.

* * *

Dean slammed his fist against the door. "Alex! Come on! Please."

He couldn't hear anything inside the room. _Perfect_, he thought, a thread of anger twisting its way up through the panic. He'd searched for her all morning to try and tell her how he felt and the whole thing had just nose-dived off the rails and into something else, something wrapped around in feelings and memories he knew he hadn't dealt with, hadn't gone through. How was he supposed to be able to deal with this if she wouldn't let him near her?

Just fucking _perfect_. Turning away from the door, he walked back down the hall and grabbed the jacket from the hooks beside the door. He'd cool off, he decided. Eat something. Just think. Think about it. He opened the front door and walked out, dragging the soft leather jacket on one-handed as he pulled it shut behind him.

* * *

_**Chambre d'ombres, Pyrenees**_

Mist began to curl around them as they walked down the narrow trail from the ridge line, swirling around their feet at first, then rising until they could hardly make out the trail and the rock and the trees to either side had disappeared in the amorphous grey air.

"This isn't natural," Baraquiel said as he slowed, picking out the way foot by foot.

"No, keep moving down," Penemue agreed. "The valley opens, I think."

"Why would Cas think we're being watched?" Shamsiel watched Baraquiel's heels in front of him, stepping where the taller man stepped, despite the effort it took to lengthen each stride.

"Gadriel confirmed the Grigori were moving, in the United States as well as Europe," Baraquiel's voice was ghostly in the ever-thickening mist ahead of them. "We are visible to them, as they are to us. And if it is Raphael who is leading the rebellion in Heaven, you know he would contact them first."

Penemue nodded. "The question is not if we're being watched," he said wearily. "But by how many. Whoever the ruler of Hell is, the knowledge of the tablets will have led him to us."

"Is it even possible for a mortal to contend the closing of the planes if the time is not yet?" Shamsiel glanced over his shoulder at his brother. "Humanity is a long way from being ready."

"I don't know," Pemenue answered pensively. "The lines were changed when Lucifer was aided to escape, and again when he was killed. Kokabiel tells me that Hell is stirring, he can feel the demons massing at the gate in Utah, though they will have to wait until the way is clear before they can progress. He said that the lines are dim now, as if much of their power has been diminished – or removed. He cannot tell which."

"What about the twin forces of Creation?" Baraquiel asked, his voice low. "Can we track them and trap them ourselves?"

The dark-haired Watcher at the rear shook his head. "We cannot open that box without being drawn into it ourselves. Only those possessing a soul have sufficient connection to the divine to use it. And I believe they are in Asia now," he added. "They will circle the globe many times in their duties. Nintu will find her first-born too quickly for us to contain them."

"I do not like that everything rests on the humans who've survived, brother," Baraquiel said.

From the mist ahead of them, a quiet, deep voice answered. "And we do not like that we are dependant on creatures from the other planes to help us to clean up the mess that your brothers made."

The red-haired Watcher stopped abruptly, Shamsiel jarring an ankle in trying to prevent himself from cannoning into his brother.

"Andante?" Penemue peered through the mist, watching it curl away as two figures walked toward them.

"Yes," Peter said brusquely, looking at them. "The mist will hide us for a short time only from more penetrating eyes, we have to hurry."

He turned away and Penemue caught sight the woman accompanying him, tall and thin, with close-cropped dark hair framing a bony and beautiful face. She waited for the three Qaddiysh to pass her and fell in behind him.

"Your safehold is guarded by illusions?" he asked, half-turning his head back to her.

"This used to be a well-travelled area," she said in a low, warm voice. "The valley has been hidden from mortal and immortal view since before the Crusades."

A wise precaution, Penemue thought, given the wealth of information it contained. "How many do you have here?"

"There are fourteen of us here now," she said, her tone sharpening unaccountably. "Peter and I will accompany you to America."

He nodded. "Will the defences hold here?"

"Against most things, _oui_, yes," she said, the shrug implicit in her voice. "Against the archangels – or archdemons, probably not."

The mist parted abruptly and they walked single file along a narrow rock ledge, the gaping black entrance of a cave directly ahead. The Pyrenees, the Watcher knew, were largely limestone, and the cave systems held within the long range were extensive.

Peter slowed as he entered the darkness, moving cautiously over the rough ground to the left. Baraquiel frowned as he saw the smooth rock wall ahead of them, the hunter still striding toward it. It dissolved as Andante passed through, and beyond a long, narrow cavern bent and twisted into the mountain, stalagmites and stalactites forming a tight obstacle course through which they had to wind, keeping in single file and occasionally twisting to the side as the dripping of water echoed faintly throughout the passage.

The cavern widened and Penemue looked at the underground river that appeared to their right, smooth and oily dark in between shallow rock banks, flowing steadily south. It emerged from a seamless rock wall, under it, he thought, without a ripple to show the exact location. Next to the river, a large door pierced the same wall, set tightly and slightly recessed into the stone.

Peter stood in front of it, and slid a large iron key into the lock, turning it sharply. From deep within the rock, they heard the multiple clunks and rattles as the locking mechanism turned slowly, releasing the door. The Watchers' eyes widened as they saw it lift, rising into a slot above the doorway, the gaping holes of the mortices showing the width and depth of the tenons that held it firm when it was down.

Peter walked through, and stopped, gesturing to those following him to continue. Beyond the doorway, a huge curving room, a hundred feet across and eighty feet high, was edged by a narrow stone staircase, spiralling down to a floor below them.

Elena moved past them, leading the way down the stairs, and Penemue followed her, hearing his brothers' footsteps behind him. The walls had been smoothed and straightened, he saw, although not embellished. On the floor, banks of computers and telecommunications equipment lined them; in the centre, a long, wide table stood, lit from underneath and showing a map of the globe on its clear surface. He could see different coloured lights marking various locations around the world and he slowed as he approached it.

"The blue lights are the surviving chapters of the order," Elena said quietly, stopping behind him as he stood looking at the table. "Those red dots are demon activity or demon signs. The yellow lights show the position of the fallen – yourselves included," she said, glancing around as Baraquiel and Shamsiel stopped beside her. "The green flashes are the little we've been able to track of the goddesses – Ninhursag in China and Nintu in Australia right now." She pointed to the trail of small flashing green dots.

"How are these able to see each type of event or non-human?" Penemue asked, brow creasing slightly.

"The parameters exist in our databases." A tall, thin man walked from a wide doorway at the far end of the room, gesturing expansively as he came toward them. Long, grey hair was drawn back into a thin ponytail at the nape of his neck and thick glasses magnified bright green eyes, giving him a misleading look of constant surprise. "We have been able to access some satellite data, most geophysical but I have finally been able to capture the GOES data and also a military satellite that is looking for different signatures in the atmosphere – I've modified both to track changes and anomalies in surface and atmospheric conditions that match our parameters."

"We give off changes that are discernible to a satellite?" Shamsiel looked at him in astonishment.

"You generate a different energy force and wavelength to humans or other life-forms," the man told him with a slight smile. "So yes, I can 'see' you and the other fallen angels, although I cannot differentiate between you and a full angel, or between the Qaddiysh and the Grigori."

"This is Michel," Elena said dryly. "He is our most useful member, I think."

Peter walked around the table. "Michel, the _Irin_, Penemue, Shamsiel and Baraquiel."

"It is a pleasure to meet what one has only ever read of in legend," Michel said, inclining his head. "Your signals were weakened when you emerged from the crypt," he added thoughtfully, looking at the pack on Penemue's back. "The box? I believe it distorts your energy waves."

Baraquiel nodded. "We have been told that by an angel as well. It is a doorway, between this plane and others, so that's not surprising."

"May I study it? While you're here?" Michel asked, his voice calm, but his eyes very bright.

Penemue shrugged slightly. "It does not function without the appropriate key – it seeks only a particular type of … energy," he said, using the same definition as the programmer had. "I'm not sure what you can learn from it in this place, in this state."

"But I can look, _oui_?"

"Yes." The Watcher slid the pack from his shoulders, letting it drop to the floor. He lifted out the wrapped box and watched bemused as Michel took it reverently and carried it to a clear desk space in front of the computer monitors.

"Come, you should meet the others," Peter said, looking past them to the doorway from which Michel had entered. "We need you to help with the translations of the older texts – there are ambiguities."

"When do we leave for America?" Baraquiel asked him.

"In two days," Elena said, turning to him. "From Hendaye. The Atlantic is not going to be kind to us."

* * *

_**West Keep, Lebanon**_

Sitting between Maggie and Rufus, Dean half-listened to Rufus retelling his version of a hunt he'd done in '81, eating automatically, smiling when everyone else smiled, struggling.

He'd thought it through, after Dave'd told him. He'd thought about everything. What he wanted and what he could give and what it would take. He hadn't thought much about the future because he'd pretty sure then that he didn't have one. But when Death showed him, he'd thought about what he could become without her, and what he would do. And he'd thought about it all again. He'd never asked. And he hadn't told her. What he wanted. What he felt. He'd thought just feeling it was enough.

"Dean," Rufus leaned over and looked at him and he blinked, looking back at the dark eyes.

"Yeah."

"Got a bottle of very good whiskey in the office."

Looking down at the table, he realised he'd finished eating. "Yeah."

"When do you want to get started on this?" Maggie looked up as he got up.

"Get started on what?" he asked, unable to remember what he'd said five minutes ago.

"Taos." Her eyes narrowed slightly as she studied him. "The fallen angel attack."

"Right," he agreed, nodding. "A couple of days, if the weather holds."

He backed away from the table and followed Rufus out of the room, wondering what exactly he'd said at the table. He couldn't remember any of it.

"Sit down," Rufus said as he opened the door to the small office the hunters in the keep used for record-keeping and planning when they were there.

"What'd I say about Taos before?" The question was out before he realised he was going to ask it.

Behind the desk, Rufus pulled out a bottle and a couple of glasses and set them down, unscrewing the lid and pouring a double for each of them. "Said we'd take a load of long-range stuff, the holy oil and sneak up on them, pin them down and do as much damage as we could," he answered, his mouth lifting on one side as he pushed one glass toward Dean.

"Right."

"What's going on?" Rufus picked up his glass and let a mouthful trickle down his throat.

"Nothing."

"In a pig's eye."

Tossing back the glass, the smooth whiskey roaring gently down his throat, Dean pushed the glass back across the table, leaning on the edge tiredly. He rubbed a hand over his face and shook his head.

"To be honest, I don't know," he said quietly. "Alex's pregnant."

Rufus paused for a fraction of a second as he poured a little more whiskey into the glass. "Given that every woman between fifteen and fifty is knocked up, here and in Michigan, maybe that shouldn't've come as a surprise."

Dean rolled an eye at him. "I didn't think of it that way."

"She couldn't," Rufus guessed, remembering the conversation he'd had with her about Dave.

"Until Death pulled her back and the creation chick kick-started her again, yeah, that's what we thought."

"What's the problem?" Rufus asked from behind his glass. "Thought you two were pretty simpatico? Better than with Lisa."

Dean looked down into his glass, letting his breath in an audible exhale. "I –"

Rufus waited. He'd found over the last three years that the man sitting on the other side of the desk would talk, from time to time, when he needed to, but he couldn't be pushed into it. It didn't come naturally, and it took time.

"It was different with Lisa," Dean finally said. "I didn't … it wasn't …"

He hadn't been anywhere close to love with Lisa, Rufus knew. But he thought that Dean was a lot closer to it with Alex. Not admitting it, not looking at it, maybe. The pregnancy was going to screw that up, he thought, that entire situation coming close to replaying itself in his head, with all the predictable repercussions.

"You worried about what might happen to Alex?" he asked lightly.

Dean's gaze snapped up to meet his. "No," the response was instant. Then he looked away. "I don't know. Maybe," he admitted unwillingly. "It's not just that."

"What'd you tell her when she told you?"

The silence stretched out and Rufus rolled his eyes. "You said something, right?"

Dean finished the contents of the glass. "It was a – surprise," he prevaricated, pushing the glass back across the table.

"Uh huh," Rufus said, taking the glass and looking at him. "She told you she was going to have a kid, yours, and you didn't say a word?"

Dean nodded, his eyes on the desk.

"And then what'd she do?"

"She said she was tired and went to the bedroom and locked the door."

"Huh."

"Pour the fucking whiskey, Rufus."

He tipped an inch into the glass and pushed it back. "And what'd you do?"

"I left."

Dean looked back up as he heard the deep sigh on the other side of the desk.

"Not thinking straight, or you don't want to take this on?" Rufus asked, his voice noticeably cooler.

Straightening in the chair, Dean stared at him. "I took it on before," he said defensively, hearing the doubt in the older man's voice.

Rufus watched him, thinking about that. "So what's the problem?"

It was a good question, Dean thought. Not the problem. The difference. The difference between carrying a responsibility and being in a life. The difference between feeling duty and feeling something else … something else entirely.

"You worried about losing her – or getting something you don't think right's for you?"

"You didn't want it," Dean snapped at him, cornered by the old man's insight. "You're here, Dominique's in Tawas."

Rufus laughed softly. "I had it, Dean," he said, the smile fading a little. "I had all of it and while it lasted, nothing was ever so good."

"But it didn't last, did it?" Was that, finally, why he couldn't let that last bit go?

"Thirty years ain't no shabby innings, kid," Rufus said quietly, watching the younger man over the rim of his glass.

"Thirty years is why I'm still sane," he added, his eyes dark and utterly serious. They narrowed as he watched the expressions flit over Dean's face.

Leaning back in the chair, he shrugged. "I never had a choice," he mused, half to himself. "Nothing on earth would've stopped me from being with Nance, no matter what the risk, no matter how much I was afraid that I might lose her. All that time, that time we had together, it was worth it all." He finished his whiskey and set the glass down on the table. "You got any doubts, then it's best to turn away, Dean. Life – ordinary life – is hard enough without being sure, and this life is impossible unless you got no choice in the matter, unless you can't live without her."

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Kansas**_

Sam looked up at Father Emilio impatiently. "Why are you pushing this so hard, padre?"

The priest stared back at him. "Because your time – what you must learn – is better spent here, helping Chuck to understand the visions, helping all of us to understand them."

"Death told Dean he was going to close the gates," Sam countered tightly. "So, we already know where we're heading, and I'm not leaving him alone without backup on this job!"

"He has multiple people to provide sufficient backup, Sam –"

"Not who know him as well as I do!"

"The contender for the closing of the gates, in particular the gates of Hell, is not set," Father Emilio said patiently. "The visions themselves show that what has already been changed in the lines can be altered further – and what is particular to you, we believe is more important that what Death saw happening earlier this year."

"What do you mean, 'particular to me'?" Sam asked suspiciously.

The priest gestured vaguely toward him. "Your blood, the changes that have already overcome you," he told Sam. "These would give you a stronger chance of success."

"How?"

"I do not know that precisely yet," Father Emilio hedged around the question. "But you can see that in Chuck's last vision, there was no clear sign that it would be Dean either."

Sam shook his head. "We don't have the tablet, and we don't know how we can possibly get the tablet," he said firmly. "And until we do, we don't know what the trials are going to require. Or even if Chuck is gonna be able to read the damned thing."

"This is all true," Father Emilio admitted readily. "But if you and your brother put yourselves at risk in the same ventures, and we lose both of you – what then will we do?"

"Someone else'll have to step up, I guess," Sam said with a careless shrug. "And you and Father McConnaughey know a lot more about Chuck and his visions than anyone else, so you don't need me here." He looked at the priest narrowly. "Why are you two pushing at me to stay?"

The priest sighed and sat down at the end of the table. "I understand why your brother feels compelled to take the fight to the Grigori, Sam. But we believe that this is not what he – or you – should be focussing on right now. There are ways to get into Hell –"

"Which are myth – not fact," Sam said sharply. "We haven't found a ritual or spell that actually lets us do it."

Father Emilio inclined his head. "No, but we need to focus on getting the Demon tablet before anything else."

"And when the Fallen come marching across Colorado and surround us with their alliance of demons, Father? What good will it do then?"

"The Demon tablet contains vastly more information than the trials to close the gates," the Jesuit reminded him. "The weapons against the demons came from it as well. There may be many such weapons we can use to defend ourselves detailed on it if we get it before they get here."

"Operative word being 'may'," Sam pointed out. "I'm not going to let my brother go into a fight without me. That's not happening."

Father Emilio looked at him, gauging the younger man's determination. "Even if what he's doing leads to his death – and yours?"

Sam looked at him carefully for a moment. "We've gone in on much worse odds."

"And something has kept you alive," the priest said tersely. "That might not always be the case."

"If you know something, padre, then for fuck's sake, tell me, but don't try to scare me off with vague insinuations and no proof."

Father Emilio shook his head. "I don't have proof. I have a hunch, as they say, Sam," he said. "I think this is the wrong course of action."

"Take it up with Dean, then."

"He won't listen to me," Father Emilio said. "He is too worried about the people here."

Sam let a gusty exhale. "And he should be. That's what we do, Father."

* * *

_**West Keep, Lebanon**_

A billion stars sparkled faintly against the black sky, his breath freezing as it left his lungs. Dean stood on the keep steps, his coat drawn close around him, looking at the endless expanse of the night above him.

He could live without anyone, he thought bleakly. Could walk away from his brother if he was sure that was the right thing to do. Not look back. He could walk away from Alex as well.

It would do more than hurt. It would change something deep down, something fundamental inside of him if he did. It would be giving up on something that had kept him going, one foot in front of the other, his whole life. Some barely-felt, barely-alive hope that things would be … could be … different. One day.

His greatest regrets were not dying in Iowa and not seeing Zeppelin playing live at the Forum in '77 – it'd been two years before he was born but he still regretted not seeing it – and he knew without a doubt in his mind that if he walked away now, this would be a regret that would overshadow everything he'd ever done in his life.

Was that the same thing as having no choice, he wondered?

This wasn't taking one for the team, leaving because no one could know what they did, what he did, he realised slowly. Everyone knew what he did and they still didn't know if the croats or Pestilence or Lucifer or whoever had been controlling them had known and deliberately chosen Lisa for their target, to get to him, but it didn't matter, did it, because he'd already painted a bullseye on Alex, just by being with her. Everyone in the keeps, everyone in Michigan, knew her, knew that she was with him. Leaving now wouldn't protect her. It would only make her more vulnerable.

He leaned back against the cold, concrete wall, tension and indecision knotting the muscles at the back of his neck, through his shoulders.

_Don't rationalise away the danger because you want it so much_, he told himself, blinking as the admission slid out, easy as breathing. Did he? Want it so much that he could talk himself through the risks? Or was it just that the whole damned world was at risk now and no one more so than the people under his protection?

He pushed off the wall and turned to the door, going into the hall and heading for the stairs. Debating it with himself was an exercise in pointlessness, he thought, taking the stairs three and four at a time. He'd stood in front of her and said nothing, and he had to get past that first.

* * *

The apartment was dark and cold when he opened the door. He looked down the hall at the bedroom door and turned into the living room, laying a new fire mostly by feel and lighting it, watching the tentative flames curl around the kindling and gradually start to grow.

His picks were in his other coat, and he walked back to the hall, feeling through the pockets until he found the slim leather case and pulling it out. Behind the bedroom door he could only hear silence, and he dropped to one knee, working the wrench and pick through the simple lock with hands that were damp with nervous sweat.

The door swung open as the lock clicked, and he walked to the side of the bed by memory, reaching out and almost knocking the lamp over, grabbing it and switching it on in the same awkward movement.

Alex rolled over toward him, eyes narrowed against the brightness, her hand lifting to shade them as she scrambled back against the pillows, sitting up.

"It's me," he said, looking down at her, relief that she was still here and guilt at the sight of her swollen and reddened eyes warring uncomfortably. "I'm sorry."

She nodded slightly, leaning forward to wrap her arms around her knees.

He sat on the edge of the bed, uncertain of what to do next. "Thanks for the jacket," he said finally, not knowing where else to start. He looked around the room absently, his attention sharpening suddenly on the cases that stood by the door.

"You were leaving?"

"I didn't think you were coming back," she said, her voice flat and muffled.

He closed his eyes, his imagination effortlessly supplying what it'd looked like to her; the empathy, that deep streak in him, giving him a taste of what it'd felt like. Swallowing against the dryness in his throat, he looked at her.

"When you said – it got messed up," he told her disjointedly, feeling his way slowly through how it'd felt, how he'd felt, the words he needed to describe it to someone else. "What you said – what you told me. With what happened at Chitaqua. What happened with Lisa."

She didn't say anything, her forehead resting on her knees, face hidden.

"That's – I'm – that's not an excuse, Alex. It's just what – just what happened," he added, the flutter under his ribs getting stronger.

_Do you … now_, he wondered, waiting for her to move, to say something, to do something. He struggled to stay there against a surge of self-protectiveness urging him to get out, to leave before she could hurt him, to turn away and go and not look back, pretend he wasn't, he didn't.

He felt the tremor through the bed under him first, cutting through his conflicting feelings and thoughts as he looked at her and saw her shoulders shaking. He was across the bed, his arms going around her, before he'd realised he'd moved, tightening his hold as he felt tension in the rigidity of her muscles.

_ImsorryIdidntmeanitIdotooyouknowImsorryAlexImsorrysorrysorryitwasntmeantwasntwhatIwantedtodotosaytofeelsorryAlexpleasesaypleasedoyoudoyoustill_? He closed his eyes, ignoring the thoughts that were racing in tight circles in his head, hearing the stagger and hitch of her breathing, his cheek against her hair.

* * *

The light was off and his arms were still around her as they lay together in the darkness.

_I didn't love her and it was a duty I chose to take on_, he told her, _and it made it worse_. She nodded, understanding his pain, the depth of it, knowing that it would live in him until the day he died.

_I knew that I wasn't going to have a family_, she told him, _and I was terrified_. His lips brushed her forehead and he saw the fear, fear of having what she wanted, fear of it being taken away. He knew that fear.

_I don't know how to do this_, he told her, _can't say the things you need to hear_. Under the words, she heard the longing and understood that it was there, whether he said it or not, admitted it or not.

_Is it something you want_, she asked him, _do you want to walk away?_ And he shook his head, his throat closing up. _I want to be here_, he said tightly, pulling her closer, telling her the way he could, the way he knew how.

In the cold darkness of the room, in the warmth they made between them under the covers of the bed, they moved slowly, every caress drawn out and savoured, every taste, every touch, revealing more than words could, filled with passion and tenderness, filled with ache and pleasure, all of it dissolving grief and heartache and pain and anger. He didn't want to stop talking like this, his nerves frying as every touch and taste and smell and sound flickered through them, sheet lightning inside of him, the heat coiling deeper and tighter, a low, shuddering throb in time with his pulse. And when she welcomed him inside, and he remembered what they had already made, he forgot how to breathe, forgot to be afraid, forgot everything but what he knew, could feel, down where he lived and where he was just himself, just Dean, just a man who wanted this.

* * *

Alex stretched out as she listened to the sounds coming from the kitchen. She felt loose and heavy, her body warm and tired, her mind quiescent and peaceful. They hadn't left the apartment for two days and she knew it couldn't last. He was heading out in the morning for New Mexico.

Rolling over, she rested her head against her forearm and let herself drift. Chuck and his visions. Death and his prediction. The creative and destructive forces walking the world.

A life, growing inside her.

She closed her eyes against the tingling shiver that slid down her spine. She was acutely aware of her fear. She had mourned for a long time in the hospital, uncaring of her injuries, of what had happened and what she'd done, only locked into what had seemed an unending spiral of grief that had dragged her so deep in its undertow she hadn't thought to come back up again.

Opening an eye and looking at the open doorway, she knew that he felt it as well, that fear. He'd lost a child as well. The promise of a child. She'd felt it in him. Neither of them could ignore the past, it lived too close to them, had too many memories that could not be forgotten or buried.

She wondered if that was why it was different with him, different from the others who'd shared her body, shared her bed. Just perfectly in the moment, in the feelings, in the sensation that coruscated through from one to the other, a building crescendo that never failed to fill her with a peace she couldn't have imagined with anyone else.

Footsteps and the clink of china drew her attention back to the room, to the present. Dean walked into the bedroom, jeans half-buttoned and loose around his hips, a large bowl, steam rising fragrantly from it, clutched in one hand, two bottles dangling precariously from the fingers of the other.

"French fries?" she asked, looking at the piles of thin, golden sticks that filled the bowl and were covered in streamers of red.

"Yeah," he said, setting the bowl between them on the bed and passing her a bottle of cold beer. "That's what I felt like."

She ducked her head to hide the bubbling laugh that rose, and reached out for one, dipping the end in the ketchup.

"They're good," she told him, taking another. He nodded contentedly. They were. Next time, he'd wear a shirt when he did them, though, looking down at the small red burns over his chest where the oil had spat at him. He took a handful from the bowl, licking his fingers as he watched her eat.

* * *

The susvee's low rumble echoed from the high concrete and stone walls, not loud, but penetrating. Sam sat in the front seat, Elias, Danielle and Maggie taking up the seat behind him. The caboose they pulled was loaded; supplies and weapons, including the spatter bombs Franklin had made specifically for the job.

"Take us a couple of days to get there, and we won't be staying long," he said to Alex on the keep steps.

She nodded, looking into his eyes. He stood on the step below her, and the change in perspective was odd, but nice, she thought.

"Michel sent the last data from GOES last night," she told him. "Another big front coming, it'll hit the northern Rockies tonight."

"We'll find somewhere to hole up," he reassured her, pulling her close. He couldn't let the kiss pull him too deep. Couldn't let it go too long.

She stepped back and he looked at her for a moment, committing her to memory. He turned away, walking down the steps and climbing up into the cab, feeling her watching him, an odd warmth filling him. Putting the vehicle into gear, he manoeuvred it around the bailey, checking the mirrors as it straightened out.

_She did. Still_. And that was all he needed to know.


	9. Chapter 9 Elemental Division

**Chapter 9 Elemental Division**

* * *

_**Chambre d'ombres, Pyrenees**_

The library had been built into the existing cavern, the stone smoothed and polished and shelving built along the straight walls to the high, naturally-domed ceiling. It was a dry cavern and the smell in it was overwhelming from old paper, furniture polish with a hint of lemon and the aromatic scent of burning pear wood in the wide, open hearth to one side.

Penemue glanced around the room. The hunters and scholars of the French order were, on the whole, hardened and cold-eyed. The Qaddiysh had been welcomed cordially enough, he thought, but with some reservation, particularly from the older members. He glanced across the room to Francesca d'Lengue. Thin and sharp-featured and in her early sixties, he guessed, although the dark chestnut hair cut in a smooth pageboy cut and alabaster-fine skin belied that estimate. He saw the years in her eyes. Green-grey and watchful and shadowed by too many memories.

Alain Pentecost was the other surviving senior legacy. Tall, narrow-framed and like Francesca, watchful and calculating, his silver hair was receding from a high forehead and long, narrow face.

The younger hunters, Luc Arente and Marc Barnaud, were perhaps more typical of their type. Luc was dark-haired, over six feet, a powerful frame, dark grey eyes under black brows, a sardonic twist to the full mouth. Marc, a similar height and build, dark blond hair cut short and hazel eyes in an open, square face. Both men were completely straightforward, neither hostile nor friendly, but waiting to see what the Watchers would do first. They reminded him of the Winchesters.

"These are the texts we retrieved from the Vatican," Elena said, gesturing around the boxes and books and manuscripts piled haphazardly over the tables in the long room. "We have been sending our translations – and interpretations – to Kansas," she continued. "Jasper has raised some questions and we would like you to verify the information we've sent if you can?"

"Of course," Penemue said, glancing around at Baraquiel. "What are the problems?"

"The locations the Church has – had – for the first-born of Nintu, for one," Antoinette said, getting up from the end of the table and walking to them. Slender and fair, with a scattering of fine freckles over her face and neck, her hair gleamed titian under the warm overhead lights, her eyes a shadowed grey. "We have Usiku as being locked up in Africa, but Jasper and Katherine both believe that the first vampire was actually imprisoned somewhere in the United States."

"And Raat was supposedly buried in an ancient volcano, somewhere in the Pacific," Jean said truculently. The young man's face was drawn and pale, a result of the grief for a lost companion, Elena had told him, along with a prickly, difficult attitude. "But Jerome tells us that he too is incarcerated somewhere in the Americas."

Shamsiel spoke. "At the time, no people existed in those countries. All the first-born of the goddess Nintu were sealed into geologically stable sites in what is now Canada down to Argentina."

"So these are wrong?" Elena asked, seeing Jean's face spasm.

"Isabeau died for nothing?!" the young man exclaimed at the same time.

Penemue looked at him compassionately. "Some of the details will not be correct, others will be. The task was not for nothing."

Jean turned away and walked from the room. Penemue noticed that none of his companions attempted to follow. Youth had little use for logic or reason in the face of powerful emotion, he thought.

"We need to find the references to the tablets, and to the accursed plane," he said to Elena. "The monster situation will stabilise if we can draw Ninhursag and Nintu back to their prison."

"Stabilise?" Francesca asked coolly from her chair. "Already the populations have doubled, and the human population is declining more rapidly than ever."

"The first-born still need humans to increase their numbers," Alain agreed. "It makes no sense that they would be increasing when what they need is reduced."

"Ninhursag has passed over the world twice now," Michel said from the broad, arched doorway. "Each time fertility and the imperative to reproduce have rocketed out of sight statistically, at least among the animal populations."

Baraquiel looked from him to Elena speculatively. "But you have not seen its effects in the human populations you know of?"

Elena ducked her head and Penemue noticed that Antoinette looked away at the same time. "We have seen a number of small populated enclaves in this area but they have been too afraid for us to communicate with them."

"But you are bearing a child, yes?" Shamsiel asked her directly.

She nodded, glancing at Antoinette. "We both are."

Luc found something else to do in the deeper stacks and Francois grinned at the Watchers. "It was a chaotic couple of weeks," he said with a Gallic shrug.

"I can imagine," Baraquiel said without inflection. "The Americans too will have seen her effects. And any other groups of survivors, no matter how small."

"It doesn't explain why the children of Nintu are increasing now," Alain said shortly. "These children will not be born for months, and it will be years before they can reproduce themselves, even if every woman carried the child to term."

"No," Shamsiel agreed. "There is something that we do not know."

Francesca smiled. "There are vast galaxies of things we do not know."

"Can your table show us concentrations of people?" Penemue asked Michel curiously, gesturing behind him to the room they'd entered through.

The programmer shook his head. "I cannot differentiate between the different carbon-based animated life-forms, not even between a large school of fish and a large herd of deer except by environmental abstraction," he said, shaking his head. "The only truly unique thing that differentiates humanity from anything else is the soul, and I have no possible parameters for measuring that."

Peter walked into the library, holding a sheaf of weather charts in one hand and looking around at the people sitting there. "We leave here the day after tomorrow," he told the Qaddiysh. "We have a good chance of getting past the Azores before the Siberian high moves further west."

* * *

_**US 40 W, Kansas**_

Inside the cab of the rugged vehicle, the heater was blasting at them and the noise of the engine and the clanking of the tracks was muted – _somewhat muted_, Sam amended to himself as Dean skirted a hump by the side of the invisible road that might've been a car once, or something else entirely, and the clatter increased with the change of direction.

He turned around in the front seat to look at Elias. "What've we got in the back?"

"Franklin's specials." The auburn-haired hunter grinned at him. "Holy oil, iron caltrops and enough C4 to leave a nice crater wherever they go off."

"They're actually masterpieces." Maggie said indignantly "Tiny but pack a punch those angels are not going to forget. Plus the usual," she added, rolling her eyes slightly. "Stingers, a couple of Stigs, an assortment of mines – all remote detonate – and ammo for everything."

"What Chuck wrote down narrowed the location down to the northern end of the town," Dean said over the noise. "We'll go in on foot first, take a very cautious look around and figure out how best to take them out."

"And if they see us coming?" Sam asked.

"Then we're in big trouble," Elias said with a snort from the back

Dean shrugged, waving a hand at the windshield and the road beyond. Nothing moved in the expanse of white, the snow humped and driven into high, long curves and dunes.

"Would you expect an attack in this?"

Sam looked around. He had no idea how his brother was finding the road, the drifts had levelled parts of the land and created hills were there were none in others. In any other kind of vehicle, it would've been impossible to travel through the heavy snow and the frozen and refrozen ice fields. The susvees were designed for it, though, designed for the ice sheets of Antarctica and the North Pole, designed to be able to find their way across any surface and through most conditions.

He thought of the description Chuck had written about the place. A long, low ranch house on a well-appointed property at the base of a range just north of the town. Three men and a woman, not human, but fallen. Four nephilim – possibly, from the descriptions, and three others. The prophet hadn't detailed what they were, said he hadn't seen them do anything but watch the perimeter and study books in the flashes of his vision. _Cambion_, Sam wondered uneasily? Cas had said that the Grigori had made a deal with them, some of them at any rate. Half-human, half-demon, and he remembered Jasper's theory of how they were made. And their powers.

Michel had sent another transmission through late in the night. The Qaddiysh were at the French chapter, reviewing the texts from the Vatican vaults. They might be able to clarify details that none of the legacies or scholars had understood. They'd been around long enough, he thought sourly. They had to know something about the Word tablets, about the children of Nintu and why they were spreading out so fast and how they were finding populations of survivors that had eluded the hunters.

Without the tablet, they were relying on Chuck's visions of the future. Father Emilio had been right about that. They needed the tablet to be able to really take the fight to the demonspawn. But finding it … on this plane or the other … that would be a real trick.

Dean glanced in the rear-view mirror at the three sitting behind him. "Get some sleep if you can," he told them, his gaze flicking sideways to his brother. "The weather data we got this morning means we're gonna have to find someplace to pull off tonight, anyway. Then we'll keep going in the morning."

Maggie sighed and stretched as little, turning her head to the back of the seat and closing her eyes. Beside her, Danielle smiled slightly as she heard the older woman's breathing switch almost instantly into the steady, shallow pattern of sleep. How long would it take her to be able to do that, she wondered? Her stomach was fluttering at the thought of what they were heading into, her nerves filled with a low-grade hum since they'd left the keep. She was with the best hunters left in the post-Apocalypse world, she realised, but it wasn't enough to keep her imagination from messing with her. Three years ago, her biggest worry had been that she was failing her major.

Elias nodded and leaned against the window, letting his eyelids drop. In front of him, Sam stretched out his legs and closed his eyes, aware of how impossible it was for him to just go to sleep on this job. He would give his brother some peace of mind by pretending though.

The boxy vehicle crawled along the road, compressing the snow under its weight, the caterpillar tracks gripping through the powder and the ice with equal ease. Dean watched ahead, the shape of the banks, the faint shadows as the dim light moved from one side of the overcast sky to the other, showing him where the road ran under the blanket of snow. Driving was as natural as breathing and his hands lay light on the wheel and controls as he calculated every surface almost automatically.

* * *

It was almost dusk when the snow thickened, driving horizontally from the fields to the north of them, the staccato rattle of the granules almost loud enough to drown out the machine. Shadows lay purple across the banks and drifts and he watched through the wipers for anything that would provide some shelter and prevent them from ending up buried for the night.

He went past the long steel shed before seeing it, the snow piled high and in a smooth, curved drift over the top, it looked like just another hill until he glanced back and saw the dark opening in the mirrors. Slowing down, he shifted the gears and backed up, looking down at the bank between the raised surface of the road and the lower ground in front of the shed and easing them down, the tracks slipping a little on the slope but clinging on enough to get them safely to the bottom.

"Where are we?" Sam blinked, thrown around as the susvee crawled across a buried road divider and up another small bank.

"'Crossed into Colorado about ten miles back," Dean said, eyes narrowed as he gauged the power he needed for the bank. "There is, was, a small town somewhere here, but this looks like all that's left."

The vehicle humped its way over what might've been another small fence and settled down as they approached the dark opening.

"Blizzard's here?"

"On its way," Dean said, flicking on the full complement of lights the susvee had to offer, the darkness of the interior of the shed immediately dispelled as the double rows of headlights and spotlights, pointing to the front, sides and rear, lit it up.

"Looks alright," Sam remarked, raising his voice over the clanking as the tracks went from the snow to the light ice covering the dirt inside the shed. Dean nodded to the rifle on the seat between them, slowing down as they approached the far wall.

"No need to take chances," he said, taking the vehicle out of gear but leaving the engine running and the lights on. He tapped the horn and Elias, Maggie and Danielle jerked to wakefulness. "Full check and we'll put down salt and traps at the front," he ordered.

The hunters picked up their ordnance and opened the doors, jumping down and shivering as they went from the warm, snug cab to the minus temperature of the building. The shed was almost empty and Elias and Maggie took the wall where shelving and the remains of a couple of shipping containers could have hidden something as Sam and Danielle checked the rest.

Dean opened the driver's door and jumped down, feeling his boots slip on the thin ice that coated the ground. He walked around to the caboose and opened the rear doors, dragging out the arctic tents and groundsheets. Out of the wind it would be warmer than being either in the vehicle or outside, and they'd be safe enough to light a fire if they could find anything to burn.

Laying down the protection, checking the perimeter, setting everything up, he watched the hunters with him doing their jobs efficiently and quickly. It was standard procedure now, didn't need to be thought about or discussed, everyone knew what they had to do, but the memories of the past were still close enough to feel a moment's amazement at how smoothly they all worked together, and older memories butted in. Sam and him, stopping at a motel, dragging the gear in, salting the windows, cleaning their guns, the small rooms frequently filled with the battling smells of fast food and gun solvent. Tossing a coin for first use of the shower. Never sleeping all the way through because there were too many unknown sounds in the unfamiliar neighbourhoods and cities and towns.

He looked down at the battered coffee pot he'd just put over the flames and sighed. How different would their lives have been if they'd had a fraction of the resources they had now? Would it have changed anything, to have friends, and backup? Or would Hell've just targeted them as Jim and Caleb and his father had been targeted?

Pushing the unanswerable questions aside, he looked up as Elias and Danielle settled themselves on one side of the fire, and Maggie and Sam took the other. "First shift, you two," he said to Elias and Danielle. "Maggie, you're off tonight, Sam and me'll do graveyard."

They nodded without argument, and he watched Maggie dig through the bags of dried and preserved food they'd brought, throwing a selection into an equally battered pot and adding water. There were times he'd've killed for a burger, the long day's driving crashing down on him as he leaned back against the bags of gear behind him, but he'd probably've died of heart disease on that diet, he acknowledged with a faint smile, eyes closing.

* * *

"What'd he say about the lines changing?" Dean asked his brother softly.

They sat a foot or two apart, their backs to the fire, watching the open entrance with rifles loosely held over their knees.

"He said that the lines had already been altered and something about my blood having an effect on the closing of the gates," Sam murmured, lifting a shoulder slightly. "He seemed to think that it might change things further."

Dean turned to look at him. "Do you think it would?"

"I don't know," Sam said, shaking his head. "Aside from being more Hell-related, what difference could it make?"

"And he and Father McConnaughey both think that?" Dean pressed, a frown drawing his brows together as he tried to think of what the priests been attempting to manoeuvre his brother into.

"I'm not sure, it was just Emilio there."

"They playing their own game here?" Dean rubbed a hand over his jaw. Both men had had good arguments for searching for the tablet first. It would limit the support the Grigori could get if Hell was shut down before they came into Kansas. The only problem was none of them had any idea where the fucking tablet was.

"I don't think so," Sam said slowly. "I didn't get that impression."

"They know more than what they've told us?"

"That's possible," Sam admitted. "He was talking about Chuck's vision as if there was more to it than we'd seen."

"We'll go over it again when we get back," Dean decided. "And maybe check out the books the good Fathers have been reading – or get one of the others to do it."

Sam nodded. "Background information might explain it."

"Yeah."

The silence between them grew slowly. It was a normal and comfortable silence, a familiar one. Dean felt himself relaxing incrementally, feeling old habits, old reassurances returning very gradually as Sam seemed to be getting back to himself.

"Rufus said Alex was pregnant," Sam said a few minutes later. Dean sighed inwardly as he heard the very faint edge of rebuke in his brother's voice.

"Yeah, I was going to tell you," he said apologetically. "Just ended up being rushed when we got out."

"You alright with that?" Sam asked, turning to look at his brother curiously.

Dean hadn't told him much about what'd happened with Lisa. He knew from Cas and Chuck that she'd been pregnant when the croats had infected her. Knew that his brother'd had to shoot her in front of Ben. Knew that it'd screwed him over for more than a year. Dean hadn't filled in the huge gaps between those few facts, but he could guess at the how and the why of that reticence.

"Yeah," Dean said slowly now. "I think so."

Sam's mouth lifted wryly on one side as he turned to look at him. "You think so?"

"I'm not going to just leave her to handle it alone," Dean told him, flicking a glance his way.

Sam nodded, turning to look back at the featureless black of the shed doorway.

"Ellen said you gave her hell for not looking out for her while you were down in Oklahoma," he said neutrally. "But you know, it wasn't that easy to figure out, Dean."

"Because I shack up with chicks all the time?" Dean asked sarcastically.

"Because none of us knew what you were thinking."

For a moment, Dean didn't respond and Sam wondered if he'd gone too far. He heard his brother's deep exhale, not daring to look around at him.

"Yeah, maybe because I wasn't looking at it real hard," Dean said softly.

Sam did look around then, his brow creasing up in surprise at the admission.

"And are you? Now?"

Dean shifted uncomfortably, staring out at the blackness. He didn't talk about this shit often enough for it to be even remotely easy. The vulnerability, showing someone that vulnerability, always set off alarm bells, even with Sam. Sometimes, especially with Sam. And he couldn't explain what he felt anyway. Not in words.

"It's … uh … yeah," he said tersely. "I'm looking at it."

"Dude … you falling in love?"

He turned to look sourly at his brother. "I'm going to have a look outside."

Sam snorted softly as his brother got up and walked to the doorway.

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Kansas**_

The building was almost silent, Father McConnaughey thought. The low hum of the generators that powered everything, a subliminal sound easily tuned out. The rustle of paper and the occasional grunt from the readers, discovering something new or revising something previously thought. The very soft crackle of the wood burning in the hearth. He looked at the watch on his wrist and smiled derisively at himself. In the wee hours of the morning, he shouldn't be so surprised.

This place had been a revelation to him. The town as well. He'd seen the signs and had tried to convince his parish of them, tried to fight past the way the people had thought he was talking in metaphors and illuminations, not realising that the signs and seals were as real as their mortgages, more real for they presaged a time where financial consideration would be rendered meaningless.

He'd failed. The long-recognised admission brought a soft sigh. He'd been forced to run from his little town, from the people who had been under his guidance, under his protection, to save his skin when the infected had poured through. He would be doing penance for that act for a long time.

People were resilient, and he'd found a few here and there, the small groups joining together under more decisive leaders. None of them had really known what to do, in a world that seemed more nightmare than reality, a world of demons and darkness, of monsters and the inescapable fact that without a place to shelter, without food, they were all going to die.

He'd prayed for help in the wilderness and help had come. They'd been led, like those of old, out of the wild and back to civilisation and the messenger had told him to watch for the men who would change the world yet again, who would be strong enough, and sure enough, to close the gates. When he'd come here and seen Father Emilio, he'd known it was meant. The Jesuit had seen it in him, had seen the messenger's touch on him and had known as well.

Father Emilio had convinced him that the men the messenger had spoken of were here. He agreed with the priest's assessment. The accounts they'd been able to glean from the scholars here, from occasional slips from the hunters who protected the place, confirmed that it had been the older Winchester who'd faced the devil and destroyed him, who had set into motion the next set of lines. Sam had told Emilio that he'd been Lucifer's vessel, and a little of why that had been so and how he'd escaped.

He'd spent the first forty years of his calling working in the libraries of the Church in Rome. Had met Father Emilio there twenty years ago. Had known of what was coming, although it'd been an academic knowledge. He'd not thought that he would see it within his lifetime. Retiring to his home town, he'd seen instead people who found it harder and harder to find their spirituality. To find meaning in the insanely-paced world in which they lived. People who'd become inured to the savagery in the cities and the indifference of their governments and the callous greed of the corporations that paid their salaries. And passion … for life, for the causes of good, for others … passion had been so far diminished in those people he'd wondered privately how they got up every morning.

He scratched at his beard and looked back down at the text in front of him. What Chuck had seen and had written down was a tiny fragment of what had been set in motion with the death of the Fallen One, he knew now. The prophet's visions were invariably tied to the Winchesters and Father Emilio had told him that Dean stood astride a multiple node in the lines, a convergence of possibilities that his actions alone could dictate. The Jesuit wasn't sure why that was, although he believed it had been deliberately arranged so. The order's history of the Winchesters, and the Campbells who formed the other side of the equation, were detailed but mainly speculative. No one, not the Jesuit, not the sole remaining legacy of the order, not the intelligent and shrewd scholars who were labouring to understand the machinations that were becoming more and more apparent, understood exactly how and why the two bloodlines of the Qaddiysh had been required and manipulated to create two brothers with such an impact on the fate of the world.

Father Emilio was convinced that the manipulation had been solely arranged to enable to release of Lucifer, to bring about a perversion of the Paradise foretold. Father McConnaughey was not so sure of that. The demon's access to the family had not been preordained, at least not according to the interviews the order had conducted after the first meeting. And although the blood given to the infant had changed Sam Winchester and allowed access to the power that could break the final seal of the Cage, the factors that had changed their lives, had driven John Winchester into a life of revenge and training his sons to be the warriors they became, that could not have been foreseen, even along the lines. And it evidently had not – Dean Winchester had become the single weapon that had been able to destroy Lucifer.

More than a single conspiracy, he'd suggested to the Jesuit. More than Heaven meddling with destiny and adjusting the consequences of their machinations. Father Emilio had considered that carefully. It was possible, he'd admitted.

In any case, the old priest thought now, there was another branching. With the unsealing of the Word, and the repercussions that had brought, they were no longer facing a single battle.

"Jasper!" Katherine's voice cut through his thoughts and pulled his attention back to the library and those in it. "The Qaddiysh have revised this section."

The old man looked over his glasses across the table to her. "On the possible locations of the first monsters? Yes," he said. "I saw that."

She shook her head. "No, that part I expected," she said. "This is the last section on the text of the prophet."

Jasper frowned and got up, walking around the table to lean over her shoulder and read the pages in front of her.

"The prophet spoke of days of death … and the brightest angel bled out of the world …," he mumbled, stopping and looking at her. "This is the prophecy for Lucifer's death."

"Yes, keep reading," she instructed him tersely.

"And … God would test them. Test them unto death and purify them," he read slowly, brows drawing together as he straightened up, replaying the words in his head.

Father McConnaughey watched him. "It refers to the tablet?"

Jasper looked around to him. "To the Word, I think." He looked down at Katherine. "Is there any more?"

"Not so far, they're still working on the next section," she told him. "Test them unto death – that doesn't sound reassuring."

"It's a fragment, Katie," Jasper said distractedly. "We need a lot more."

Father McConnaughey closed the book he'd been reading and pushed it aside, getting up from the table. He needed to let Emilio know, he thought. They'd believed that either one of the Winchesters could close the gates but that Sam might be the one. The demon blood tied him closer to Hell than his brother. And Chuck's visions had included several clues as to why that might be important.

* * *

_**One week later. Hendaye, France**_

Of all the bodies of water in the world, the bay he looked out across had one of the worst reputations, Peter thought morosely. Biscay was a large semi-circular bay on the western coast of France. The continental shelf was shallow a hundred miles out from the coast, then plunged into an oceanic trench, and the difference in the underwater heights created turbulence in the seas even when the prevailing on-shore winds were not blowing a gale, which was rare enough.

He looked along the deck of the steel yacht tied to the dock next to him. Forty-five feet long, and cutter-rigged, she had been the most suitable ocean-going vessel they could find. The single mast and two headsails were the most powerful yet simple configuration for a small crew to handle, no matter what the weather.

The sailmaker's yards in the complex had been fortuitously built of steel and stone and brick and the sailmaker had, before his or her untimely death, been meticulous about storing the work, wrapped in plastic and packed into steel and plastic chests. Just as well or their journey would've been over before they'd started, with every sail the yacht had had gone, piles of eyelets and toggles lying on the decks the only clues they'd ever been there.

They'd been here two days, and the electronics and electrics had been replaced, along with the rubber seals for the engine and all the missing gear that had been edible to Baal's plague. The big diesel tanks were full. The water tanks were full. They'd packed their food stores and had replaced the full complement of sails plus spares, lines, wire and tools. They could sail tonight, the tide would turn at two.

Over three thousand miles, taking the lower route from the Azores to Rhode Island. The higher northern route was quicker, but the winter gales and icebergs were a concern in the higher latitudes. The trade winds were well-established and they would make good time with their steady help, laying off south to Bermuda and picking up the Gulf Stream as they got closer to the east coast of the American continent.

"Is everything stowed?" he asked Elena as she came out through the narrow companionway hatch and looked around.

"Yes, we're ready."

"Good, this is conceivably the worst possible place to leave from, but the overland to a better port would've taken longer."

She smiled at him. "It will be you and I for most of this trip," she said, glancing down the companionway to the cabin below. "The Qaddiysh have not had so much experience with the sea."

He shrugged. "That will keep the chain of command short."

Another thought occurred to him. "When are you due, Elena?"

She looked at him in surprise. "Early August, I think."

"You will be alright?" he asked awkwardly, not sure of what he wanted to know. "There are no complications?"

The corners of her mouth tucked in as he looked away uncomfortably. "Yes, I am fine. No morning sickness."

Turning away, Peter nodded and she saw the relief in his face. "Good. Don't need any added worry."

She watched him absently as he walked along the dock to check the lines, reviewing her memories of the previous time she'd been pregnant. There had been no discomfort, no sickness … not even the tiredness after the first few weeks. A stray memory intruded and she ducked her head, the skin of her neck colouring slightly as she remembered one side effect of the middle part of the pregnancy. That wouldn't happen again, she hoped.

* * *

_**Taos, New Mexico**_

The vehicle came to a stop and Dean turned the engine off, silence dropping over them like a lead shroud. To either side of the narrow ravine, the rocky walls towered against the thick, low cloud, snow clinging to the grey stone, more deeply mantled over the trees that crowded at the narrowest point, swept into a smooth carpet as the walls drew away and a small stream trickled sluggishly along the base of the western side.

"How far are we?" Sam asked, opening his door and dropping down to the ground.

"Four miles from the best prospect," Dean told him, landing on the other side, the rifle slung over one shoulder, Ruby's knife sheathed at the back on his right hip and the automatic tucked into a jacket pocket along with two mags. He looked at Elias and Maggie and gestured to the sharp wall behind them. "That ridge runs behind the property; don't get closer than a half mile. We just want to see where everything is."

The hunters nodded and turned up the ravine, heading for the trees.

"What about us?"

"We'll look from the other side of the access road," Dean said, shutting the door and pushing the keys into his jeans pocket. "Be about a mile from the house but that's as close as I wanna get this time out."

Sam nodded, settling the rifle over his shoulder as he waded through the brushed powder across the narrow road and began the climb up through the broken, crumbling rock.

Everything was still, the thin woods drab in the grey light, no signs of the wildlife that should've been there, Dean noticed uneasily. It was a good indicator that they had the right place, the local animals moving away from an occupied building. He wasn't sure that it was the right explanation, though. The back of his neck had been prickling all day as they'd looked along the mountain ridge in their first very long-distance look, and it was getting stronger as he got closer. The thick, white-splotched camouflage suits were not quite ghillies, but had been sewn with extra pieces of cloth along shoulders and arms and legs, helping to break up their outlines against the patchy background of snow and rock and timber. The cold was penetrating through their layers despite the warmth of the suits and the effort of the climb.

He nodded to Sam as they crested the bank that ran along the other side of the gravelled access road, dropping to their knees and inching up under the cover of the bare and spindly undergrowth, the house and outbuildings now clearly visible through the leafless trees that lined the long drive. They were almost a thousand yards away, and he was confident that they were invisible. Easing the rifle in front of him, he put his eye against the scope, adjusting the focus as the buildings leapt into a much closer view.

It was a big compound. Several large buildings took up the northern side, barns or workshops. The house, long and low, stretched out across the widening valley floor and faced south along its long axis, catching the winter sun on the stone-paved porch that ran from end to end. Lot of windows, he thought, moving the barrel around incrementally. Lot of doors too. A big pile of stacked logs lined nearly a third of the house wall under the cover of the porch roof, and to one side of the house, an untidy heap of logs had been left out in the weather, splitting block in front of it with an axe buried in the top of it. His attention sharpened as a woman came out of a door along the porch and walked slowly along, lighting a cigarette and looking around.

She was tall, he realised, measuring her height by eye against the height of the door behind her. The thick, high-necked sweater fell to her hips, jeans outlining long, slender legs. Pale blonde hair had been drawn into a smooth braid at the back of her head. Civilian, he wondered or one of them? She turned around, a streamer of smoke escaping her lips and he saw her face. Oval. High cheekbones. Large pale eyes. Beautiful. One of them, he decided, unable to pinpoint the reason for the certainty he felt, but sure of it anyway.

Behind her, a man came out, also tall and blond, broad-shoulders half-disguised under the elegantly-cut silk suit, his breath fogging white in the cold and mimicking the cigarette smoke as he spoke to her.

Dean recognised the chiselled features from the photographs the order had in their file on the Thule Society. Dietrich, the name came back to him as he glimpsed the chill, blue-eyed stare through the scope. Very much one of the bad guys.

The man leaned close to the woman and he registered the relationship between them automatically, filing away the attraction and simultaneous distaste that seemed mutual. Something in their body language, some juxtaposition in the arrogance of their positions and the frigidity of the interaction, told him that cruelty was a trait of both, careless and natural. He wouldn't worry about either going down, he thought.

He was aware of the woods around them, aware of his brother lying four feet to his right, Sam's breathing barely audible, aware of the faint breeze that had begun to blow down from the peaks, aware of the dead silence that surrounded them, not even a trace of the conversation he was watching carrying on the almost-still air and over the snow to them.

He didn't have any warning at all.

The stock of the shotgun hit precisely on the nerve centre behind the ear and Dean slumped to the ground, the rifle falling from his hands. Sam was unconscious before he registered the blow to his brother, his gun lying on the thin covering of sodden leaf fall and crystallised snow in front of him.

"Get them down to the house," Draxler said quietly, looking down at the men. "Bring their weapons." He looked around the ridge. "There will be a vehicle, somewhere close by," he said to the boy and girl standing behind him. "Find it and bring it in."

They nodded and reached for each other's hands, disappearing with a faint pop as the air rushed to fill the space they'd been.

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Kansas**_

Mitch came into the library, his face white and pinched as he looked at Jerome. "Chuck's having another vision, I think."

Father Emilio looked at him. "Is he in his office?"

Mitch nodded. The priest looked at the people seated around the table, brow cocked. "One person rather than all, yes?"

"Merrin left a draught, to help him with the pain," Jerome said, gesturing at the hall. "It's in the kitchen."

Mitch nodded again. "I know where it is." He turned and ran down the hall, his footsteps thumping over the carpeted hardwood floor.

"Jerome, you had better call Bobby and Ellen," Jasper said, watching Father Emilio follow the young man out.

"He will sleep and in the morning, he will write it all down," Jerome said heavily. "No need for everyone to lose another night's sleep for no reason."

"We're not focussing on the correct thing anyway," Davis said from his chair by the fire. "It's becoming more apparent that we must retrieve the tablet, and we have no means of even discovering where it might be."

"Chuck might give us more clues this time," Father McConnaughey countered mildly.

"If the tablet has been taken to Hell, there is lore on how to break through to that plane," Katherine added, looking at Davis questioningly. "What changed, Davis?"

"Even if the hunters can stop or slow down the Grigori in New Mexico," Davis said slowly, looking from her to Jerome. "Even if the Qaddiysh can put Ninhursag and Nintu back into their prison, there are people out there, who are being possessed – according to Chuck's vision – and turned into monsters. And the tablet is the only thing that's going to give us a way to stop that from happening."

"Agreed," Jerome said impatiently. "And if we can find a definitive answer to discovering the location of the tablet, we may be able to do something about getting it, but until then …?"

"We've been looking in the wrong places." Davis gestured around the room. "We're not looking for lore but for ritual – for a spell of divination."

"You think that will work?" Katherine stared at him.

Davis looked over at Jerome. "It's what you learned, isn't it? In becoming an initiate? The spells to change things, to alter reality … to find things?"

For a moment, Jerome didn't answer him, looking at the flames cavorting over the burning logs in the hearth. Then he nodded.

"He's right." He pushed himself away from the table and turned his chair, rolling down the ramp to the elevator. "Jasper, can you wake Marla and Oliver? We'll need them."

Father Emilio sat in the chair beside the long sofa, his hands clasped around Chuck's as the convulsions eased and the writer's eyes rolled back in their sockets. "Mitch, the draught, before he loses consciousness completely."

The programmer poured out the measure and handed it to the priest, and he tipped a little between Chuck's lips, relieved as he swallowed automatically, letting the liquid trickle gradually into the prophet's mouth until the cup was empty.

"How long does he usually sleep at this stage?"

Mitch shook his head. "He slept for nine hours, the last time," he said uncertainly.

"I will stay with him if you want to rest, or continue your work," Father Emilio said, glancing at the mounds of paper surrounding the long desk that served as the programmer's workstation.

Mitch nodded, moving back to the desk. "I'm uploading and collating," he muttered, pulling out the chair. "Once it's running, it'll take all night and I can leave it."

The priest nodded and turned back to look at Chuck's face. Colour was returning to the pale skin and the rapid eye movement beneath the closed lids told him that the vision was playing out to the prophet.

_See what we need to see, Chuck_, he said to himself. _We must close Hell before the demons can make any more deals. Before the rest of the Grigori can get here_.

The messenger who'd answered Sean's prayers had been plain. The gates had to be closed now – before the current demon king could do anything and while the archdemons were bound and helpless. If they got free, for any reason, the chances of locking the accursed plane would be lost.

* * *

Jerome pulled his glasses from his face and rubbed the bridge of his nose tiredly. It'd been years since he'd looked at most of the incantation and ritual magic books the library held. Years since he'd needed any but the most simple for the research he'd been doing. Along the long sides of the table, Marla and Oliver, Father McConnaughey, Katherine, Felix, Jasper and Davis were silently bent over their books, skimming through ancient Greek and Latin, through Sumerian and Akkadian cuneiform, through Hebrew and the pictograms of Egypt's earliest writings. Aside from the rustle of the paper, or the clink of the clay tablets on the polished timber table, the room was hushed.

Everything he could remember needed a key, he thought, pulling out the small square of antistatic cloth and polishing the lenses. Something associated with the object sought, or the material it was made of, or of its essence somehow. He couldn't remember ever seeing a divination spell that didn't require one.

As if he'd heard his thoughts, Felix looked up suddenly. "What about a symbol?"

"For the key?"

The old man nodded. "The Word was supposedly written by the Scribe, wasn't it?"

Jerome's eyes narrowed as he put his glasses back on, catching a glimmer of the language professor's idea.

"Mattatron … or Metatron," Jasper said slowly, nodding as he looked from Felix to Jerome. "There should be a sigil for him – his mark, every angel has their own. It would be unique to what he worked on."

"Marla, could you bring the angelology documents from level three, please," Jerome asked and the young woman pushed back her chair and hurried from the room.

"Would he sign the Word with his own sigil?" Katherine asked, her brow creasing.

"It would be proof of the authenticity of the tablet, for the rest of Heaven," Jasper said, looking at her. "Proof that it was actually God's Word."

"What else could it be on?" Davis looked at him.

"It might be on all of the tablets," Jerome said, considering the possibilities. "Could be on anything that God deemed suitable to give to mankind."

"The Ten Commandments?" Father McConnaughey looked up from his book. "The Ark of the Covenant?"

"Possibly," Jerome said, a slight smile crinkling his eyes.

"So we could be looking at dozens of locations?" Katherine asked him.

"Probably not dozens, I should –"

"We will have narrowed the search from the entire globe to a few locations," Jasper said sharply, looking at Katherine and Davis. "That is more progress than we've made to date."

She looked at him coolly. "No need to get your panties in a twist, Jasper."

"What do we need for a spell if we have the symbol to key it with?" Davis interrupted the silent feud between the professors.

"We have everything that's mentioned in most of these spells in the apothecary," Oliver said, gesturing at the books covering the table. "The key is always the most vital ingredient."

Jerome nodded. "Oliver, we'll use the map spell, get the candles and the equipment, we can use the situation table to start with."

"This might not work," Jerome continued, turning to Jasper. "If the scribe did not sign the tablets, we may find nothing."

"Better than sitting here doing nothing, isn't it?" Jasper returned caustically, flicking a glance at Katherine. "As much as I hate to admit to an agreement with him, Davis is right. There are people we need, people humanity needs, who are going to die if we don't move faster."

* * *

_**45º15'52.93 N, 22º29'46.30 W, Atlantic Ocean**_

Elena stared up at the flapping shreds of canvas that were still attached to the slides on the mast. She turned abruptly and sidled down the side deck, both hands keeping a firm grasp of the grab-rails and rigging as she went as the yacht rolled and pitched through the confused seas under her.

"We'll need to get the damaged slides out first," she told Peter as she slithered over the cockpit coaming and crouched behind the dog-house. She wiped the salt spray from her face as she looked up at him, feeling the drying crystals rasp on her skin. He nodded.

"Penemue," he called down the companionway. "We'll need you and Baraquiel on deck in a moment."

There was a grunting assent from below decks and Elena hid a small smile. The Qaddiysh had helped as much as they could during the height of the storm, but all three had retired to the relative stability of lying flat on the bunks when it was plain that their presence was more of a hindrance than a help. Shamsiel still had a greenish tinge under the dark skin of his face, moaning softly from time to time as the boat dropped from a peak into a trough.

She lowered the door into its slot in the bulkhead, climbing carefully over the sill and raising it behind her as she backed down the steep, narrow steps into the main cabin. Neither Penemue nor Baraquiel had actually succumbed to the mal de mer that had overtaken their brother, but both were bruised from being thrown around in the tight confines of the cabin during the storm and both looked tired.

Moving slowly up the passage to the forward cabin, she spared a grin for both of them. "The wind is backing finally and we will be able to get out of these seas soon. The mainsail is gone, but we have a spare, I'll just need some help to get up the mast."

Penemue nodded, getting to his feet and climbing the steps to the cockpit, Baraquiel following more slowly, both men holding onto the available hand-holds along the narrow passage, having learned the lesson of not keeping a hand for the ship and one for themselves the hard way.

Elena lifted the mattress and the slatted board that lay under it, her fingers finding the bosun's chair unerringly by feel in the dim light and close quarters. She pulled it out and checked the line, recoiling it as she picked up the canvas seat and tucked it under her arm.

The mast was sixty-five feet from the deck and swaying and rolling like a pendulum as the hull canted and dipped over the short, high seas. Looking up at the top, Baraquiel swallowed quickly against the sudden vertigo and dropped his gaze to the deck that was, at least, only moving up and down.

"You're going up there?" Penemue asked disbelievingly, his eyes fixed to the top of the mast, whipping back and forth, circling and figure-eighting in a highly unpredictable fashion.

"You're going to pull me up," Elena confirmed, stepping over the coaming and glancing back over her shoulder. "Harnesses on," she ordered them shortly. "It would be hard to retrieve you if you go over the side."

Peter hid a grin as he watched the _Irin_ drag their harnesses out, clipping lines to the slim metal track that was welded to the coach-house. The job needed finesse to remove the jammed slides, but only muscle to get Elena to where she could work.

At the height of the storm that had kept them in Biscay's seething seas, the wind had gusted heavily, ripping the luff of the sail down along the edge closest to the mast, and most of it had gone into the sea, holding the boat against the waves. They'd cut it free and let it go, but the weight of the water in the cloth had been enormous, all the pressure exerted against the few slides that had remained both in the mast track and attached to the sail. The spare main had its own slides. Elena would know immediately if the slotted track had been damaged.

Under the tiny trysail now, they were keeping head to wind safely enough, waiting for the seas to calm. A day or two of a following wind would see them into the Atlantic proper, away from the bulging coastline of Spain and the strong currents and gales that were a feature of Biscay. Another couple of days and they would pass north of the Azores and then it would be fast sailing to the American coast. _If all went well_, he amended to himself. They could take the time to dry out the boat and its contents, and get into a routine. The boat carried a sextant and a good chronometer as well as a full set of charts for the north Atlantic. Navigation wouldn't be a problem.

He looked up, seeing Elena retrieve the main halyard block and tie the chair to it, hauling up the line until the chair hung a little below waist height above the deck. She climbed into it and wrapped the tail end around the winch on the mast, handing it to Penemue and, with many gestures, explaining the procedure. The _Irin_ nodded, passing the end of the rope to his brother and taking a hold close to the winch. Elena checked once more that they all understand the signals and nodded, pushing off the wildly swinging mast as the two men hauled her up. She was at the top in moments, legs tightly wrapped around the slimmest section, ignoring the movement of boat and mast as she studied the track and the Irin slowly lowered her, stopping when she called out, resuming at the sharp downward drop of her arm.

A shakedown sail, they'd used to call it, Peter remembered. The boat and her crew had passed the test satisfactorily.

* * *

_**Taos, New Mexico**_

A cold hard floor under the side of his face.

A grunt of pain behind him.

The click-click of high-heels somewhere in the room.

Dean opened his eyes slightly, his view restricted to floor level. His head was throbbing in time with his pulse, behind his ear; nausea from the head blow turning his stomach over slowly. In his direct eyeline, he could see Sam, still unconscious and lying on his side, his arms as tightly trussed behind him as he could feel his own were.

He closed his eyes, replaying the last memories he had. _The thin, silent woods. The two talking on the porch. A shift in the air. Nothing_.

He couldn't think of anything that could sneak up on him and Sam without even the slightest of warning. His neck had been prickling all day, he remembered. He couldn't remember if that had gotten stronger before they were hit.

"How did you find us?"

The voice was light, male, thickened with a strong German accent. Dean heard the low grunt again and realised that things were worse than he'd thought. They had the others too.

"How did you find us?"

"He won't talk like this, Baeder." Another voice. Male. German accent. Not as strong.

"The others are awake." A boy's voice, young enough to not have broken yet.

"Thank you, Jesse," Baeder said, the words clipped and without feeling. "Tell Hubertus that we need him."

"Yessir," the boy said, and Dean opened his eyes narrowly again, watching a pair of small sneakers walk past him and around the sofa that blocked most of his view of the room. The kid sounded American, he thought, wondering what the hell he was doing here.

Several minutes later, heavy bootsteps entered the room from the same direction that the kid had gone and Dean narrowed his eyes further, barely slits as he watched a pair of worn, leather mountain climbers boots stop in front of him.

"You wanted me?"

The voice was male and deeper than the other two, an accent there but difficult to place.

"Which one is the leader?" Baeder asked abruptly.

Dean saw the boots turn and take a step toward him, eyes widening in shock as he felt himself lifted one-handed by the collar and dragged to his feet, the man's grip shifting to his shoulder and shoving him forward between the sofa and an armchair toward the two men standing on either side of Elias.

The hunter was sitting in a straight-backed chair, arms and ankles bound tightly with wire. Elias' face was swelling rapidly, raw red scrapes over chin and cheekbone and temple, one eye closed, the other slitted. Worked over only, Dean thought, regaining his balance as he stopped a few feet from them.

"Get him out," Baeder ordered, gesturing to the auburn-haired hunter in the chair and walking toward Dean.

"How did you find us?" he asked, stepping close.

"Lucky guess," Dean said flippantly, looking around the room. Two doors, one just on the edge of his peripheral vision leading into the house. The other a double-glazed French door set leading to the long front porch. The room was big, the furniture over-sized and generously spread out, a fire burning in a massive closed wood-stove in an interior wall. On the other side of the sofa a man and the woman he'd seen earlier stood, both watching silently. Maggie and Danielle were lying behind the second man, both bruised, both breathing. Maggie was staring at him, the side of her mouth swollen and bleeding. One eyelid flickered.

He saw the blow coming from the corner of his eye, telegraphed in the lift of the man's shoulder. The tightly closed fist was meant to hit his mouth, he thought, turning his head a fraction before it connected so that it scraped along his jaw instead, letting his weight drop back onto his right foot and dissipating the power as he rode it. He tasted blood from a cut on the inside of his cheek and dropped his head, spitting it onto the floor as he looked back at Baeder.

"How did you find us?" Baeder repeated in a monotone.

"Googled you," Dean told him, one side of his mouth quirking up insouciantly.

The blow from behind hit his kidney and felt like someone had rammed a tree-trunk into it. He staggered forward, vision sparkling as his nervous system absorbed the information and overloaded momentarily, pain sinking in through his back and down his legs.

_Christ_, he thought disbelievingly, _stay on your fucking feet_. A quarter turn of his head as he tried to keep his balance showed the impassive face of the man who'd picked him up, standing behind him. _The one who'd picked him one-handed_, he corrected himself. He wasn't pretty enough to be a fallen angel. That left one possibility and he felt his confidence sink as he took in the strength and power of the man who was not a man. Not entirely.

Sucking in air, he straightened up as much as he could, turning a little so that his back wasn't to the cambion.

"I will ask you one more time –"

"Don't be ridiculous, Baeder," the other man said lazily. "They won't talk like this."

"Your suggestion, Dietrich?"

Dietrich smiled slowly, walking to Danielle and lifting her easily to her feet, thrusting her forward toward the half-breed.

"It's Winchester, isn't it?" he said conversationally to Dean, the smile lingering. Dean didn't respond, keeping his face expressionless.

"Well, Mr Winchester, we would very much like to know how it is you could find us in this wilderness –" Dietrich said, gesturing slightly to the girl. Draxler stepped forward, his hands closing around her shoulders. Dean forced himself to keep his gaze on Dietrich.

"– with such accuracy," the blond man continued. "If you do not tell us, Mr Draxler here will pull this pretty girl apart. Slowly. You have thirty seconds."

"The Qaddiysh told us," Dean said with a show of reluctance, after ten seconds of taut silence. He let his shoulders drop a little. "We saw them in Jordan."

"The Qaddiysh cannot see us," Baeder spat at him, his face screwing up in fury.

Dean looked at him briefly and turned his gaze back to Dietrich. "They can. They told us they wouldn't get involved but they showed us the location of your base in Utah and they told us you were stuck here, until the passes clear."

He risked a glance at Draxler. The man's face showed no reaction. Danielle's face was white, her eyes wide.

"How else could we possibly have found you?" he asked Dietrich.

Dietrich studied him thoughtfully. "That is an excellent question. You came here to … what? Take us out?"

Dean nodded. "Prevention's better than cure."

"Yes," Dietrich nodded slowly. "Something I believe as well."

He turned sharply from Dean and looked at Draxler. "Take them out and shoot them, leave the bodies for the wolves," he said to the cambion. "Not the girl or the woman," he added as Draxler started to push Danielle toward the porch doors.

Dean saw a flicker of an expression cross Draxler's face as he released Danielle, going to the chair to pull Elias out. The half-breed's jacket gaped a little as he leaned forward and he saw the sub-machinegun in a modified holster under it, swearing inwardly as he realised that whatever move he was going to make, it would have to be now. They would have no chance at all against the cambion and the gun. Dietrich moved behind him, walking toward Danielle and Dean threw himself backward, feeling the other man go down under him, hearing the crack of his skull hitting the hardwood floor. He rolled over and snapped back to his feet, the shoulder-spring taking him close to Sam, who was rolling to his feet, already moving as they ran for the French doors together.

"GET THEM!" Baeder screamed. "_KILL THEM!_"

The doors were cedar, the light wood splintering under their combined weight and speed, the thick double glass panes falling free and smashing on the stone pavers. Dean felt blood running down the side of his face as he rolled onto his feet, turning hard to the right and seeing his brother doing the same, both pelting along the porch as the crunch of boots on glass sounded behind them.

"Plan?" Sam gasped as they made the corner with two bullets zinging past their ears.

"Stop," Dean snapped, his hands stinging furiously in the cold air, the long sliver of broken glass cutting through his palms. "Turn around."

He felt for his brother's wrists, slicing through the thin plastic wire and feeling Sam turn around behind him, taking the glass from him, pressure as he cut through and freed him.

_The fucking susvee was four miles away_ … the thought disappeared as he turned to look at Sam, following his brother's surprised look across the yard. The susvee was sitting a hundred yards distant, in front of the long machinery shed.

"Get the Stingers and start taking the house down from the other end, I'll get the others," Dean said. He could hear Draxler's boots thundering down the porch toward them and he shoved Sam toward the back corner of the building. "NOW!"

Breaking out left, Dean headed across the yard toward the big barn, his soles slipping a little on the hard-frozen snow. A glance over his shoulder showed Draxler was following him and gaining. There was no sign of his little brother.

_Just get him down and get that gun_, he told himself as he shot through the partially open sliding doors into the darkness of the barn. He had the feeling that the darkness would work against him but he needed something to keep the half-breed off him as much as possible. One on one wasn't going to give him any advantage.

"You can't get out," Draxler's deep voice was muffled in the interior of the barn, absorbed by the bales of hay and straw that were stacked along the walls. "You cannot beat me."

_We'll see_, Dean thought, moving as quietly as he could along the wall of stalls. He saw the long shaft and grabbed it, reversing it smoothly and holding it out, the sharp prongs of the pitch fork casting off a faint gleam in the dim snow-reflected light from the doorway.

_Gotta gun so all he has to do is shoot you_. The thought ran through his mind and he threw himself to one side, the expected bullets whining above him.

"I can see you, human, but you cannot see me," Draxler said, moving more cautiously as Dean ducked backward behind the stacks of hay.

* * *

_**West Keep, Lebanon**_

The scanner moved slowly over her stomach and Alex looked over at the monitor as Kim angled it this way and that, looking for the best picture.

"Are those –?"

The slender doctor nodded. "Two heartbeats," she said, capturing the image and sending it to the computer. "Twins. Fraternal, I think, not identical."

"How can you tell?" Alex asked, feeling her pulse accelerating.

"One is a little larger than the other," Kim said, peering more closely at the grainy image on the screen. "Not always reliable but in this case, more probable." She captured another image and lifted the scanner from Alex's skin, drying it and setting it down and passing a sterilised cloth to Alex to wipe the gel from her stomach.

"Why?"

"Because of the effect of Ninhursag," Kim answered absently as she called up the files and ran them through the software Mitch had created to get the highest resolution from the pictures. "So far, we're seeing around eighty percent multiple births, and most of them will be the same, a day or two at most difference in conceptions, possibly even different fathers, although I hope not."

"Super-charged fertility clinic on the go," Alex said tiredly, sitting up and thinking of the ramifications of that. "Did you finish the statistical probabilities for Jerome?"

"This morning," Kim said, turning back to her. "Alex, there's absolutely nothing wrong with you. We're really much more worried about the women at either end of the age spectrum, especially the older ones."

"Mmm-hmmm."

"You're perfectly healthy, both babies have strong heartbeats and they look exactly as they should for this stage," Kim said, hitting the print button and retrieving the print out as it hit the tray. "Look, see for yourself."

The picture was still grainy, but she could see them now, the second shot capturing the tiny, curled up children growing in her. Two.

"When do I have to come back?" she asked Kim, handing back the printout.

"No, you can keep that, show it to Dean when he gets back," Kim said, passing it back. "At twenty weeks. We'll be able to see the sex then if they cooperate. Just a routine check."

Alex nodded. "If there was anything wrong, when would you see it?"

Kim sighed and looked up at her. "If there was anything wrong with the babies, we'll see it in the first three months. If anything goes wrong with their environment – you – it could happen at any time. But I seriously doubt anything will. And I mean that."

She added the second copies of the pictures to the file and stood up. "Get dressed, and we'll go over what you can expect in the next few weeks, okay?"

Nodding, Alex slid off the examination table, picking up her shirt and slipping her arms in. _It was all very well for Kim to say 'don't worry'_, she thought dryly. It wasn't so easy not to worry about something she'd never thought she'd experience. The dreams she'd been getting over the last two nights hadn't helped her feel calmer. She couldn't remember them when she woke, just the feelings they left, a tangled mess of fear and aching grief that she couldn't source.

When he was here, she didn't have bad dreams. She had a feeling he didn't either. She couldn't take anything to help her sleep dreamlessly now. He'll be back soon, she told herself, buttoning up her jeans and pulling on her boots.

* * *

_**Taos, New Mexico**_

_Gotta get back to the house_, Dean thought, moving faster behind the stack. He dropped as the machinegun chattered furiously, bullets spraying out through the hay bales, rolling hard forward and bringing the pitch fork up as Draxler came around the end and the gun dropped silent.

The half-breed moved with surprising speed, and Dean backed out between the row of bales and the side of the stalls fast, catching sight of the white snow in the gap between the two tall doors as he retreated toward it.

"Do you have any idea of what I am?"

"Sure," Dean said, shifting his weight to his back foot as Draxler closed the space between them. "Half-breed."

Another flicker of some unidentifiable emotion crossed the cambion's face. There were feelings somewhere in there, Dean thought distantly. Well-hidden but there.

For a moment they both stopped, Draxler less than six feet from him, the tines of the fork between them. Then the half-breed moved, a fast feint to the left and back to the right, and Dean drove forward, anticipating the deception, the tines burying themselves deeply into Draxler's chest as he launched his weight behind the tool.

The cambion grunted, hand curling around the haft and holding on as he shifted back, dragging Dean with him before he thought to release the fork. Draxler pulled the tines free, throwing the tool to the floor, and stepped in, one hand whipping toward the man and fingers scraping over his jacket as Dean shifted frantically backward. If the bastard got a hold of him, he knew, it was all over. He turned and raced for the door.

He'd barely cleared it when he felt the blow between his shoulders, knocking him forward onto the churned snow and frozen mud at the entrance. Rolling to the side, he was on his feet as Draxler stepped in. _Alright, fuck it. Think. Human and demon. Same nervous system. Same structure. Stronger, tougher, maybe but the weaknesses will be there too_.

He dropped into a slight crouch, his attention narrowed down to a tight focus on the other man. Draxler smiled, moving closer, his hands lifted and in front of his chest and Dean jumped, twisting in the air, moving faster than he'd ever moved before, his booted sole smashing the half-breed's right hand back against his chest. The left reached for him and he felt the scrape of the stiffened, steel-hard fingers down the outside of his thigh as he twisted hard and dropped to the ground on his feet and hands, ducking and rolling across the snow to get out of range.

The cambion was looking at him oddly when he rolled to his feet and turned to face him. The fingers of the right-hand were bent and twisted and he saw Draxler look down at it for a moment, letting it drop as he realised he couldn't make it close.

Dean wasn't sure he could pull off the same move twice, but the half-breed gave him an opening when Sam started firing the holy oil missiles at the house, the sharp whistle of the projectile and the explosion dragging Draxler's attention for a fraction of a second and he was in the air again, feeling the crack of bone beneath his feet as they hit the other hand and hammered it between boot and ribs. The cambion was faster this time, one arm hooking around his knee as he twisted aside, a bolt of pain from the twisted joint shooting up through his groin to his back. He lashed out with his other leg, catching Draxler in the side of the face and the half-breed let go, both men falling to the ground as the house behind them was hit with another missile and Dean heard the sound of small-arms fire.

He stood up, feeling the fire in his knee and flexing it slowly, testing it for damage. Wrenched, he decided as he put his weight gingerly over it. Nothing broken.

Draxler rolled onto his side, both hands hanging limply now and stared at him. In the dark eyes, Dean saw a dawning recognition of the idea of defeat. He forced himself to spread his weight evenly over both feet, saw the half-breed hesitate.

The centre of the house exploded and the pressure and heat wave from the blast knocked them both to the ground. _Maggie_, Dean thought bleakly, throwing his arm over his head as he squinted at the bright flames that licked through the room they'd been held in. That flickering wink had been deliberate.

He got up, turning away from the cambion and running for the house, his knee protesting fiercely as it took his weight from stride to stride. He saw someone stagger out, and accelerated, ignoring the pain. Elias had Danielle over one shoulder, both reddened from the proximity to the fire. He heard the susvee's distinctive engine start up and took the girl from the hunter's shoulder, shifting her weight over his own, and jerking his head toward the vehicle as Sam turned it to pass in front of the house.

As he handed Danielle up to Elias through the open rear door, he glanced back into the raging inferno in the house, seeing figures moving inside against the flames, uncaring of who they were. Grabbing holding of the door, he pulled himself up and inside the cab as Sam gunned the engine and the tracks bit into the snow-covered ground. Draxler staggered past them, his attention fixed on the house.

"What happened?" Dean climbed through the gap between the two front seats, looking back at Elias as he pulled Danielle into a half-sitting position over his legs.

"The woman and Dietrich started in on Danielle and Maggie detonated one of Franklin's bombs," Elias said sharply. "I knew she had it on her, but I couldn't think of a way to use it and get us all out." He looked up, his face slightly illuminated from the dash lights in the front of the cab. "I think the woman in there and the other man were killed. I was on the floor and so was Danielle. Dietrich and Baeder, I don't know."

Dean thought of the figures he'd seen in the fire. Severe burns at best, he hoped. Incineration would be preferable. He looked at Sam's profile as his brother concentrated on the road ahead of them.

"What'd you hit?"

"Took out the end of the house with the first one," Sam said shortly. "Got their vehicles with the second and then just started to work along the house when the centre went up. Figured it was time to go."

"Figured right."

"Can they follow us?" Elias asked from the back.

"Not anytime soon," Sam said over his shoulder. "Not unless they got another way of getting to more vehicles."

"Good."

Dean nodded, leaning back against the seat. "Danielle alright?"

Elias was silent for a moment, then he nodded. "She will be, I think."

Closing his eyes, Dean looked back through the disjointed memories he had of the last two hours. They'd done what they'd come for. The Grigori were stuck there until they could either get reinforcements or until the weather warmed enough to clear the passes. They knew a bit more about the cambion as well. Not enough, but it was a start. They'd lost a valuable hunter …

He dragged in a deep breath, rubbing the back of his hand over his eyes, feeling the stickiness on the side of his face.

"Straight through?" Sam asked, glancing over at him.

"Yeah," Dean said. "We'll take shifts."

_Not a win. Not really_, he thought tiredly.

* * *

Draxler pulled Baeder out of the room, careful not to touch the bubbling and raw skin on the fallen's right side. Behind him, Dietrich lay in the snow, teeth grinding together as he fought against the pain of the burns that riddled his right side.

The cambion lowered Baeder to the snow and packed it against the burns, the Grigori unconscious and limp now. He knelt beside him when he'd finished, looking at the burning house and the long shed that had held all their vehicles. The hunters had been spectacularly lucky in what they'd achieved, he thought. Perhaps not just lucky, perhaps also clever in their ability to improvise as the situation had dictated. The old woman had been very clever, first in hiding the device and secondly in giving up her life for the others. He couldn't imagine himself – or any of the fallen – doing the same. Was it a strength or a weakness, he wondered?

Two of the nephilim were dead. The other three were alive, one burned. He didn't know where Jesse and Alison were. But they were able to take care of themselves.

For a moment, he remembered the fight with the man. He looked down at his hands. They were still broken and bent but they were healing, as they all healed, immortal if their hearts remained beating in their chests. The man had been fast, he thought. Faster than he'd encountered before. Strong as well. But it had been his strategy that had allowed him to escape, Draxler knew. It had been a long time since he'd needed a strategy with any opponent. That was a weakness on his part, to have underestimated the man. He would not make the mistake again. Winchester, he reminded himself, had defeated Lucifer. A tiny thread of some emotion he didn't know how to characterise filtered through the thoughts.

He would be ready the next time they met, he told himself, ignoring that thread. He would be ready.


	10. Chapter 10 Vanishing Point

**Chapter 10 Vanishing Point**

* * *

_**Heaven**_

Castiel paced across the smooth marble floor, glancing every now and then at the slumped form of the archangel on the low dais.

"I cannot believe it, Castiel," Michael said quietly and Cas turned to him, his face tightening.

"Believe it. Raphael has been in this from the beginning." He looked down absently at the vessel he wore. The suit and trenchcoat were completely out of place in this hall, but he couldn't just leave the vessel down there as he came and went. And, he admitted a little reluctantly to himself, he liked the body. It gave very little trouble overall.

"Meddling with the lines – trafficking with the hellspawn – breaking the seals –" Michael said, his voice raw.

"Killing angels," Cas added. "Consorting with the fallen. Inciting rebellion. Treason. Disobedience."

Michael's gaze snapped up to the seraphim's face. "It will be war."

Castiel nodded tiredly. "I know."

"We have no proof," Michael said, his wings lifting restlessly behind him.

"Absence of proof is not proof of innocence, my Lord," Castiel reminded him. "It was Raphael's suggestion to imprison the Scribe, when he learned of the tablets. It was Raphael's order that the cherubim followed when they united the Winchester and Campbell lines, specifically the bloodlines of Araquiel and Azazel. It was Raphael's command that Azazel begin his work in Kansas."

"And Uriel," Michael said, getting to his feet.

"Uriel has gone beyond punishment or redemption, Michael."

The archangel sighed as he stepped off the dais. "How many followers does Raphael have?"

Cas shook his head. "At a rough guess? Perhaps seven or eight thousand."

"What does he want with the Grigori?"

"The Angel tablet, I believe," Cas said.

Michael's eyes narrowed at him. "That has been lost for centuries."

"No."

"You know its location?" Michael raised a brow at the seraphim, wondering at his certainty.

"No," Cas said. "Only the region. The scholars believe that the angels and the nephilim of the Grigori fought a battle in the desert. All traces of that battle were wiped clean by a sandstorm lasting three months. At the site of that battle, the hiding place of the Angel tablet."

"Have we verified that?" Michael frowned.

"Yes, to some extent. It is in our records. There was a battle, between nephilim and angel – not the Host," Cas said. "The battalion was under Uriel's command. The original orders were destroyed."

"I don't understand," Michael said slowly, looking at him. "What possible use could the tablet have been to Raphael?"

"Only one knows what the Word contained, my Lord," Castiel said carefully. "But it seems possible along with the instructions for closing the gates of Heaven, there may be other things on the tablet – devices or spells or ways of … disabling us, if humanity needed them."

"You think Raphael wants to somehow – what? Take away the power of the Host so that his followers will have victory?"

Cas sighed. "It's what I would do in his position."

"You have spent entirely too much time on the lower plane."

"Undoubtedly," Cas agreed. "Raphael was the last angel to see Metatron in Heaven, Michael. The Scribe fled following that meeting. A simple study of cause and effect–"

"Yes, I see your point," Michael cut him off. "We have been searching for Metatron for three thousand years. We are not going to find him now."

"It seems unlikely."

"And these meetings, with the Grigori," Michael asked, turning to watch the seraphim as he resumed his pacing. "They were all on the lower plane?"

"Yes," Cas said, his speed increasing slightly. "Raphael has been to see all three groups. We believe that he has also been meeting with the new ruler of Hell."

"Upstart," Michael sniffed disdainfully. "Did we discover what happened to the remaining Fallen?"

Cas shook his head. "Nothing we've tried so far has been able to reveal their situation. If they are still alive, they're deep in the lower levels, beyond our capabilities to see or sense."

"Who do you trust?" The archangel looked at him.

"No one."

* * *

_**January 20, 2013. West Keep, Lebanon**_

Firelight flickered against the white, plastered walls and Dean looked up from the pages he was reading as he registered the cooling of the room. Putting the sheaf of papers on the table, he got up and walked to the hearth, stirring the embers and throwing another couple of logs onto the coals.

On the sofa, Alex was sleeping, her fingers still holding a couple of pages loosely. He gently pulled them free and pulled the thick, hand-woven blanket from the back of the sofa over her. They'd been reading and analysing Chuck's latest 'chapters' for hours, trying to find more clues in the narratives.

There was nothing about the army in the latest vision and he wasn't sure how to take that. Did it mean that their trip to New Mexico had been successful and had stopped the Grigori from being able to go down that road? Somehow, he doubted it. It might've derailed the timetable, but as long as Chuck was here, the plan would remain in place. If they had the tablet, they needed the prophet to read it.

That was bugging the crap out of him as well. Moving Chuck might save the keeps and the population. The problem was he couldn't think of anywhere that was safer than where the writer was now. Even angel-and-demon-proofed, there was nowhere more defensible than the order's safehold. And the narrative had implied that the Grigori were looking for leverage anyway. It might not save the people here if the army arrived and the prophet was gone. It might make an attack that much worse.

Walking to the kitchen, he emptied the cold grounds in the coffee pot and refilled it absently, his thoughts circling around the account Chuck had written out. In it, again, he and Sam were … somewhere else. There wasn't enough detail to figure out why or where. Woods. An old boneyard with no details as to where it might be. A gateway to Hell, in the centre of it.

He returned to the chair, picking up the last few pages and carrying them to the small kitchen table, his gaze skimming over the text until he found the description.

'_The air shimmered, as if the dim light caught something there, but when Dean turned to look at it directly that shimmer disappeared and he could see nothing beyond the ordinary, leaning tombstones and brown, dried grasses, stiff with frost. As a light breeze blew between the leafless trees and dying undergrowth, the hunter caught the scent of sulphur, not consistently, but in tantalising wafts, here and then gone, as if the doorway was opening and closing, letting out the stench of the other plane in snatches.'_

_What the fuck did that mean_, Dean wondered? From the description, the gate was in the middle of a tiny clearing in the cemetery, hanging mid-air. It couldn't be seen directly but only from the corner of the eye. And was it open? Or was it opening and closing on its own?

The pot burbled softly to itself and he put the pages on the table, getting a cup from the cupboard and filling it, carrying both coffee and papers back to the armchair and sitting down again.

There was something familiar in the description but he couldn't nail it, couldn't retrieve either the sense of why it was familiar, or any memory that matched up with the location.

When they'd gotten back from Taos, he and Sam had gone straight to the order on Bobby's request. The spell keyed from the scribe of God's sigil had returned seven locations, around the world, and Mitch had used the sigil as the marker on the war table in the situation room, each location glowing a bright blue. One was in the desert, between Jordan and Iraq. Both Jerome and Jasper believed that to be the site of an underground city of the dead, _Gem Shel Yed'e_, and the most likely location for the Angel tablet. Three were in the US – in Montana, Florida and Massachusetts. There had been, apparently, a lot of arguments about the Massachusetts location, the spell had not given the location definitively, the flames moving around the area instead of remaining steady. He wasn't sure what to make of that, since none of those who'd seen it were describing it in exactly the same way either, as if they'd all seen the flames from a slightly different perspective.

The fifth location was in Egypt, and all three professors had agreed that was most likely the resting place of the Ten Commandments. He shook his head slightly, the corner of his mouth lifting with the association of a well-known and well-liked action film.

The sixth was in the arctic, north of the sixtieth meridian and as inaccessible to them as anything could possibly be. The seventh appeared to be in the order's chapter in Australia, possibly now buried under tons of rock.

The order had acquired the most detailed survey and topographical maps of the country in digital form before Lucifer had risen, and from the locations provided by the spell, both the Florida and Montana sites seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. The Massachusetts site, however much it'd moved around, was in Boston. He thought that was significant, although he wasn't sure how.

Anchoring the papers with his cup, he rubbed a hand tiredly over his face, ignoring the prick of two-day stubble against his fingers. There were too many fucking variables here, and not enough information, he thought irritably. They were hunting for clues in visions and spells, and the sense of things converging around them, converging on top of them, was getting stronger in the back of his mind. The uneasiness at the vision's insistence that he and Sam weren't here when the army attacked was growing as well. There was no fucking way he was going to be anywhere but here. He couldn't think of a single valid reason why he wouldn't be, knowing what they knew.

Felix had suggested that the movement of the Mass location was because the tablet was no longer on this plane. It made as much as sense as anything else. It also made getting the damned thing a lot harder, he thought sourly. There were ways into Hell, Jerome said. Ways to open the gates. But legend insisted that the gates were guarded. And they didn't know where they were.

_Not true_, he remembered suddenly. He knew for certain where one gate had been. Jim's journal had given the location of the gate in Pasadena. Of course, as of a year ago, Pasadena was somewhere under half a mile of water, the earthquakes that had riven California finally stressing the fault enough that a sizeable chunk of the state had collapsed into the ocean. It wasn't helpful.

He picked up the cup and his sleeve brushed against the papers, knocking the pile to the floor. Putting the cup down, he leaned over and gathered them up, flicking through them to put them back into order. He stopped as he saw the glossy printout in the middle, the grainy black and white image leaping out at him and catching at the breath in his throat.

Alex had handed it to him earlier and he glanced at it, more focussed on the prophet's visions, the spell's results and the bitter, underlying taste of Maggie's loss to pay attention to it then. She'd said that Kim had been checking the pregnancies over the last week and a half. Eighty percent, perhaps higher by now, multiple births. Humanity repopulating the globe in triple time.

And two, these two, were his.

Feeling surged through him, an overwhelming tumult, holding him fiercely in its grip as he glanced across at the face of the woman lying on the sofa and back to the printout he held. This was exactly why he couldn't believe in the visions, he thought. He'd die before he put them at risk.

Dragging in a deep breath and waiting for the churning eddies of his feelings to settle, he slid the printout under the pile. When he'd told Lisa, in Cicero, that it wasn't his life, he'd known he'd wanted it. Wanted it more than he could admit to, more than he could face. It'd taken every ounce of self-control he'd had to walk away from that invitation. It hadn't been right, he knew, not then and with her, not even later. But he'd wanted the promise of it. It'd taken him a long time to bury that knowledge, bury it deep and not look at it again. Everything that'd happened since then had proved to him that he'd been right to do that, right to feel that it wasn't for him, couldn't be his.

He still wasn't completely sure that he was doing the right thing. Not completely sure that with all that he'd done, he would be allowed to have it. Not certain that he wasn't putting Alex in harm's way again. For whatever reasons, he thought, an edge of bitterness trailing along the thought, he was still in the middle of everything. And everyone around him was at risk of being drawn into the schemes he could feel building around him and his brother. But the truth was he couldn't – he didn't _want_ to – let go of her now. No matter what the risks were.

Getting to his feet, he walked to the sofa, pushing the blanket back and sliding his arms under her shoulders and knees, straightening his legs as he took her weight and lifted. He carried her to the bedroom and put her on the bed, sitting down on the edge to take off his boots.

"What time is it?" Alex asked sleepily from behind him.

"Late," he told her, turning around and seeing her watching him through half-open eyes. "Go back to sleep."

She shook her head, sitting up and tucking her head in as she drew off her sweater and shirt. Dean stood, unbuckling his belt and unbuttoning his jeans, letting them fall to the floor as he pulled off his shirt, heat already coruscating along his nerves as he watched her undress in front of him.

_This is yours_, he told himself a few minutes later, as his mouth trailed lightly down her heated skin, tasting her unobtrusively. _No one can take this away_.

From the moment he woke in the mornings, hearing the soft whisper of breath beside him, to the moment he closed his eyes at night, the weight and worry gone in the warmth of her arms around him, it was a potent reminder that he wasn't fighting on his own, a real and tangible reminder that he had something to live for, to fight for, that wasn't an abstract of the many and the few and the sacrifices made by good men.

Her fingers trembled down his side and his breath whistled as he sucked it in through his teeth, muscle twitching and jumping with the sharp pleasure that followed them under and over his skin. It was never the same, instinct overriding technique and satiation a distant and unlooked-at goal, the path toward it meandering and fully explored, never hurried, always lingering in the flush of senses fully aware and the craving for a deeper connection, a deeper joining.

He still had no control. No ability to hold anything back. No desire to do so either, but even if he'd wanted to, he couldn't. Couldn't find distance or breath. Couldn't deny himself or her. Couldn't hold on and couldn't let go, every taste and touch, every sensation that crackled in lightning bolts along his nerves and inundated his brain, dictating that he accept and immerse himself, without thought or volition. And that abandon, that complete lack of control, of mind, of thought, reached right through him, amplifying everything, liquefying everything, drowning him and saving him and dissolving him.

Holding his weight above her on his arms, the big muscles trembling with the effort, he blinked rapidly, trying to get the spots and sparkles and black edges that had filled his vision clear again. Under him, Alex was panting quietly, lips parted and eyes half-closed, pupils enormous. The wide bed smelled of musk and clean sweat, the scents of their bodies mingled. _This is mine_, he thought incoherently, not sure of what he meant.

* * *

_**Taos, New Mexico**_

More than half of the long building was blackened and crumbling, Crowley thought, looking at the stark, skeletal remains. Turning, he saw the burned out frames of the vehicles, surrounded by metal sheets that had been twisted into spirals by the ferocious heat. Three men and two woman, he thought. Two of them had been the Winchesters, of course, and he probably should've warned the Grigori about the chequered history of those two, although he hadn't really believed the stories up till now, but still … five humans.

"We will hunt them down," Baeder's voice came croakily from beside him.

Crowley turned back to the two angels and looked at him expressionlessly. "In the state you're in now?" He shook his head. "No, we'll take them, make no mistake about that, but we'll do it my way, with an army and some leverage."

Baeder glowered at him from his remaining greyish-blue eye. The angels would heal, they always did, Crowley thought. But it would be a slow process and where the holy oil had touched them, he thought it would not heal up. Half of the angel's face was melted, the missing eye had been incinerated in its socket, and the shiny, brilliant red skin was still weeping here and there, clear liquid escaping as the swelling slowly receded. The scars would stay.

He knew that was what offended both men the most. Not the death of their peers, and he suspected, Baeder's paramour, but the fact that they were no longer beautiful. Were now, in fact, showing more of what had lain on the inside on their outsides. _God's somewhat nasty sense of humour_, the demon thought derisively.

"Where are the others?" he asked, feeling an impatience to be gone from here.

Dietrich turned and looked in the direction of the barn and two women, four men and two children came out across the crisp, recent fall of powder. Two of the nephilim had been burned as well, Crowley saw. The others seemed alright. He kept his face impassive as he noticed Draxler's hands, both swollen and misshapen under soft bandages.

"Walking wounded," he commented lightly. "Come on, what I've got to show will improve your spirits, I dare say."

He spread his arms as they gathered close to him and the air rushed in to fill where they'd been as they disappeared, leaving the dank smell of wet, burned wood and charred stone to fill the small valley in peace.

* * *

_**35º41'01.73N 54º39'33.07W, Atlantic Ocean**_

The yacht was moving fast, heeled over on her side, the water bubbling and frothing as she cut through the waves, the force of her keel against the water holding her course against the opposing force of the wind on the sails. Peter drew in a deep breath of the ridiculously fresh, salt-laden air and smiled unconsciously. Until they reached land again, there was nothing to think about, nothing to worry about except their course and the state of his boat. It was a period of rest that he was enjoying immensely.

The trade winds blew steadily against them, the boat close-hauled and making good speed. Over the thousands of miles of ocean fetch, the waves were regular, long and widely spaced, their crests furling in small explosions of white foam and sliding behind them without more than a gentle dip and sigh.

He looked down at the companionway as Elena climbed into the cockpit, her short hair shining in the bright sunlight, eyes crinkling a little as she smiled back at him.

"We are making good time," she said, less of a question than a statement.

He nodded. "Averaging a hundred and thirty miles a day. We'll reach the edge of the banks in a day."

"It went too quickly."

Inclining his head in acknowledgement, he glanced down at the dark cabin below. "The Qaddiysh are resting?"

"No, they are arguing," she told him, her tone slightly acerbic. "They would disagree –"

She cut herself off as Peter's gaze went back to the hatch and Penemue climbed out, moving to the higher side of the cockpit and drawing in a deep breath, the frown creasing his forehead smoothing out as he looked around.

"Have you come to an agreement?" Elena asked him.

The _Irin_ turned to look at her and shrugged. "Of a sort. Perhaps. We will go to Kansas, talk to the hunters about re-imprisoning the goddesses."

"Good," she said, her teeth closing with a faint snap.

He smiled at her. "We still think the tablets are more important, Elena," he said. "As well hidden as they are, they can still be found – and if their use is understood ..." he trailed away, looking back over the endless procession of waves.

"What?" Peter asked curiously.

"When he completed the Word and delivered the tablets to us, the Scribe told us that Heaven would seek it out."

"Why?" Elena frowned at him. "It is to protect humanity, is it not?"

Penemue sighed. "Each tablet, on its own and of itself, holds great power. There are secrets written into them, secrets to control the forces that were set in place to help humanity evolve. Weapons. Spells. Instructions on how to neutralise those forces, and to lock them up."

Peter nodded impatiently. "Yes, we know this."

"Each tablet – within its text there is more, revealed only to the prophet who may study them. Metatron said that we had to protect the tablets from everyone, because the power of God's Word could also be accessed from them."

The hunters glanced at each other, and Peter turned back to Penemue. "The actual power of God is held in the tablets? That it can be accessed and used?"

The _Irin_ nodded slowly. "It is better than that," he added, his eyes narrowing as he looked west. "When all the tablets are brought together, that power is magnified."

Peter looked at him, feeling the blood in his veins turn to ice. "That is why Raphael is rebelling? To regain that power so that he can wield it?"

"We think so."

"Can the tablets be destroyed?" Elena asked, her skin crawling with the thought of anyone – angel, demon or human – with that sort of power.

"No," Penemue said heavily. "Not by anything we know of. They can be used, to close and lock the other planes. To protect humanity against the forces of Hell or Heaven or the Mother's children. But as with the box we brought with us, that power is always going to be double-edged. They must be hidden away. They must be impossible to find."

* * *

Elena braced herself in the hatchway, the sextant held against her eye as her fingers slowly lowered the mirror to bring the limb to the horizon.

"_Merde!_"

Peter looked at her as she shifted her position against the doghouse ledge and tried again. She'd been getting slightly more impatient, he'd noticed, over the last few days, a little quicker to snap at the four men, a fraction more likely to get flustered. He wondered if it was just the necessary close quarters of the small yacht.

She swayed with the boat's movements, the sextant raised again.

"_Fils de putain!_"

For a moment he thought she might throw the instrument overboard and he looked away quickly. He heard the exaggeratedly deep breath she took and risked another glance. She was once again peering through the lens to the mirror, her fingers delicate on the screw. This time she looked at the measurement and at her watch, memorising both, and went below.

Peter waited until she came up again.

"We didn't need the extra sight," he remarked blandly.

"We are still at least four days out from Rhode Island," she said shortly. "And the current will be against us when we get close."

"And then we will have a long walk to Kansas," Peter said, shrugging slightly. "Elena, is there anything wrong?"

She looked away. "No, I'm fine."

He withheld his opinion on that, letting the silence stretch out between them.

"_Non_, you are right," she burst out a few minutes later, thin shoulders hunching up defensively. "I am not fine."

"What's wrong?"

"_Je me sens incroyablement sexuel!_" she said, her skin flushing a pale pink from her collarbones to her hairline as she looked at the taut sail above them. "It is – a part – never mind!"

"Elena –"

She was on deck and moving fast up toward the foredeck before he could finish, hands gripping the wire rail and rigging as she went.

Baraquiel emerged from the cabin and looked from Peter to Elena.

"What is going on?" Peter asked him in bewilderment.

"You have no children, Peter?"

He stared at the Irin, more baffled. "No."

The red-haired angel smiled, a little ruefully. "For some women, at a certain point in the pregnancy, there is an increase in libido," he explained, gesturing discreetly toward the bow of the boat. "I suspect that Elena is one of those women. The hormones, the changes, they all make it worse, emotionally as well as physically."

Peter frowned at him and looked at the hunched figure sitting on the winch near the bows. "She's feeling … uh … frustrated?"

"Indeed," Baraquiel said. "Look at her situation. How much more frustrating could it be?"

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Lebanon**_

The situation room was crowded, the scholars and hunters surrounding the underlit table. Ellen looked along the length of it, listening to the crossed conversations that were flowing back and forth, her gaze flicking from time to time to Dean, who stood at one end, staring down at the blue locations with brows drawn together.

"We can't know that the irregularity of the spells means that the tablet is located in another dimension," Maurice said to Jasper patiently. "Jerome said it himself, the spells aren't that infallible."

"We know that the Angel tablet, that is certainly not on any other plane, showed a stable response. As did the others," Jasper argued. "Except for the one in Massachusetts. That is a solid indicator that the spells worked fine!"

"Alright, enough, everybody," Bobby growled, glaring around the table. "We got too many cooks in here, and we need to cut through this crap and get down to what we can do."

Jerome nodded sharply. "Aaron, we need supporting lore for the other tablets. Marla, Oliver, if that is indeed the location of the demon tablet, I want everything on opening the gates sorted and ready to use," he snapped. The three researchers left the table and Jerome looked at Katherine and Davis. "The information Michel sent on the location of Ninhursag and Nintu still requires verification and the correct lore on using Pandora's box when the Qaddiysh get here with it."

The archaeologist and language specialist looked at each other and shrugged, turning away and returning to the library.

Sam looked around the table, shifting slightly in the newly available space. Dean was still staring down at the map. Maurice, Rufus, Ellen and Bobby were watching him. On the other side, Chuck, Felix, Jasper and Jerome also looked expectantly at the de facto leader of the free population.

"It's still sixteen hundred miles to Boston," Dean said, looking up into the silence. "And in good weather, with good roads, that'd take a day to drive." He shrugged slightly. "With the snowfall we've got, and god-knows-what kind of roads, that could take weeks," he continued. And he wasn't going anywhere that would take weeks, he added to himself. Not now.

"If it's not on this plane, it wouldn't help anyway," Sam said, looking at the older hunters. "We still need a gate. And a way to get through it."

"We can summon a psychopomp," Jerome said reluctantly. "They can guide the dead – or the living – to any of the planes –"

"For a price," Felix interjected. "And there's no telling what that price will be."

Jerome nodded. "There are a number of spells that can be used as well. But the lore on the gates agrees on one thing –"

"Cerberus," Bobby said caustically, having done his own research on the gates in the last two weeks. "Every account says the hellhound guards the gates and there's no way of getting past it."

"A hellhound?" Maurice looked at Bobby. "I thought there were dozens."

"Not a hellhound," Ellen explained. "The Hellhound." She'd read her own share of the lore and the descriptions of the creature had given her nightmares for several days. "Cerberus is a giant two or three-headed dog that guards every gate and kills and devours anyone who tries to get in without permission."

"How do the psychopomps get around that?" Sam asked her.

Bobby looked at him. "No idea. Backdoors? Secret tunnels? Who knows? It's not the only problem though. Hell changes form according to how you enter."

"What do you mean?" Dean looked at him.

"A soul going in sees whatever it's most afraid of," Bobby said, his gaze cutting away from the younger man as he noticed Dean's jaw tightening. "Cas said that when the angels went in to get you out, they were in what he called 'constructs' – flesh and blood but not mortal and the layout stayed fixed for them. But the mythology says that a mortal going into Hell sees a maze, a labyrinth that can change direction, shift levels, become visible or invisible. Mortals can't really see the souls that are in there, or the demons that aren't wearing meatsuits. And the demons can't really see the mortals because the junction between the two planes isn't a stable one, it fluctuates along the join."

"That's a good thing, though, right?" Dean frowned at him, pushing back at the memories of what he'd seen. It would all be useless to him if it didn't match up with what he would see as flesh and blood. "Not being seen?"

"Not necessarily," Ellen said, remembering the section of the book that Bobby was referring to. "It makes it easy to get lost in there, lost so bad you might never find a way out."

"That's reassuring."

"Just one of the problems," Bobby said, shaking his head. "You get in there, it's a different plane but it's an infinite one. There are meeting places where it joins this plane or some other one, but not that many. How do you find one tablet in there?"

"Actually," Felix said, leaning on the table. "That's not such a problem. There is an account in our records of a mortal who went into Hell and came out again – it was an attempt to retrieve an artefact, in fact."

"Where is it?" Bobby asked, pushing back his cap irritably. He thought he'd gotten all the references to the ways in and out of Hell.

"It's cross-referenced with the artefact – one of the golden apples of Hesperides." He gestured at the library behind them. "I'll pull it out for you."

"We still have the problem of protecting Chuck," Rufus interrupted. "Even if you discouraged them, you know they're going to keep coming," he said to Dean.

"Franklin's sending over six of his," Sam said. "Just to add another layer of protection here."

"'Here' isn't the danger," Ellen said. "It's the keeps that'll take the brunt of any attack. Demons may not be able to cross over, and we're angel-proofing everything now, but there's no lore on protection against the half-breeds, and if they can just walk in with bombs, we're going to lose a lot of people for nothing."

Dean looked at her steadily. "Even if we moved Chuck and kept moving, they'd still come here, Ellen. You know that." He flicked a glance at Bobby, seeing the old man's agreement in his eyes. "They'll use everyone here as leverage to get us to hand Chuck over no matter where we are."

Sam saw Chuck swallow uncomfortably, the prophet's gaze fixed on the table surface and his knuckles whitening along the edge.

"There's only one way we're going to be able to stop them – that's getting the tablet first and hoping there's a helluva more info on it than we know about." Dean looked at the faces staring at him, waiting for a disagreement. No one spoke.

"We need the locations of a gate. We need to know if the location matters or if once we're in, we can find whatever we need to in there. We need to know a way to distract or trick the hellhound so that we can get past it," he continued, his voice deeper than usual, and flint-hard. "We need to know how to move around in there and how to get out. And we need to know all those things as soon as possible." He looked at his brother. "We've got another month, maybe six weeks, before the weather gets better and those bastards are on the road, heading for us. So we don't have the luxury of arguing about what we can't do."

* * *

Alex rubbed her eyes and looked down at the notes Chuck had given her.

"Chuck said that he didn't include this because it didn't fit into the vision – he said it was a flash and gone," Father Emilio said, leaning toward her and picking up a page of handwritten notes.

She read through it, frowning at the disjointedness of the images.

_Brimstone. Red. Pulsing. Darkness. Screams and a wailing that reached into his mind. The stairs were stone. People everywhere, embedded in the rock, sinking into lava pits and the demons, flickering past, almost but not quite seen, not quite invisible, the awful light catching parts of them._

"Who is this about?" she asked, looking from Father Emilio to Father McConnaughey, who sat on the other side of the table, his back to the fire.

"We don't know," Father McConnaughey said with a shrug. "Chuck wasn't even sure if this belonged to the last vision."

"But it's Hell, right?" She looked back at the paper. "Is there more?"

"From the first vision," Father Emilio confirmed, lifting the handwritten sheets and skimming through them. "Here."

_The dog was suspicious. He felt his heart stop as it seemed to look straight at him, stuttering back to life as the reddish eyes moved past without recognition. The tablet lay on the wide, polished ebony desk. For a moment, he could see the man, the soul, looking out of the rock face as if through a window. Blood, spilling onto the ground._

"And this was the same – a glimpse of something that he couldn't relate to the rest?"

Father McConnaughey nodded. "He said that these … fragments … overlaid the more linear visions in bursts. He remembers them, but he doesn't know where they fit, what they mean or even who they're referring so he left them out."

"Is this why you think it's Sam?"

The priests glanced at each other. "We do not know who it is that enters Hell, Alex, whether it is to find the tablet or to close the gates," Father Emilio said quietly. "But Chuck's vision has always centred around the Winchesters. And he writes most from Dean's viewpoint."

_That was true_, she thought. Not so much in the earlier novels, but certainly in the later ones. He'd told her it was because there was too much going on with Sam that he didn't understand.

"This also was a glimpse from the last vision," Father McConnaughey said, retrieving another note from the pile and handing it to her. She focussed on the increasingly ragged handwriting.

_Sam stepped forward and handed the stone to the writer. As his hands touched it, there was a flaring light, filling his mind, blinding him. Then there was nothing._

The next paragraph was more disturbing.

_He wasn't human any longer. Nothing but a shell, a conduit, a pipeline to a power he couldn't hope to understand, couldn't dream of envisioning. He was empty and the power poured through him and took everything._

"I think Chuck is more afraid of the tablet than he is of the demon army he knows is coming for him," Father McConnaughey said, looking at the paper she held.

"Can I take these? Dean needs to see them," Alex said, gathering the sheets together.

"Of course, that was why we showed them to you."

"You could've given him these when you spoke to him before," she said, keeping the rebuke in her tone to a minimum.

"Chuck does not know where these pieces fit in," Father Emilio said. "And neither do we. If they refer to entering Hell to retrieve the tablet, that's one thing. But it's possible there's another reason for them, since they did not appear in the narrative form that the vision usually takes."

"And he hasn't seen either man alone, as the protagonist appears to be in these notes," Father McConnaughey added. "Why would Sam or Dean search for the tablet alone?"

Alex ducked her head, looking down at the papers she held to hide her expression. Dean would go alone if he thought it would protect his brother, she thought. She didn't know if Sam would do the same thing.

* * *

_**Camp Atterbury, Indiana**_

Eric Baeder looked out across the cracked concrete of the parade ground, his eye following the movement of the troops as they marched across the ice-coated surface, his smile confined to the side of his face that still had movement.

The demon, Crowley, had found almost two thousand survivors. He hadn't divulged how. It didn't matter. Every one of them was being controlled by a demon and they were trained in the use of the weapons that the base had held in abundance. When the roads had cleared, it would be a matter of days to get to Kansas.

The skin stretched reluctantly and with pain as he clenched his fist around the polished silver head of the walking stick he needed now. They would pay. They would pay in pain that would surpass anything they'd ever considered, he thought with a savage satisfaction.

"You look … happy," Dietrich said, walking up to him.

Baeder turned his head slowly. The muscle and tendons had been almost burned away in his neck, revealing the shape of his windpipe and the bones of his spine, and he could not move his head fast in any direction.

"Is Draxler back?" he asked, his voice cracked and hoarse.

Dietrich nodded. The oil from the bomb had spared his face. He was bald now, and always would be, and most of one ear was gone, but he still had expression and movement.

"He took two of the farm-workers, and another one from the affiliated camp in Michigan," he said. "No one who would be missed too quickly."

"Have they talked?"

It'd been Dietrich's idea. Jesse and Alison could move around the country – around the world and between the planes, for that matter – at will. Draxler had gone with them. They needed information about the hunters, the men in particular. Most small communities knew a great deal about their leaders, even if they did not know them personally.

"One has," Dietrich answered. "We have a list of names of those who will provide the best leverage. They are all in Kansas."

"And the others?"

"One died immediately," Dietrich said with an indifferent shrug. "The other doesn't seem to know much."

"Dispose of the bodies thoroughly."

"Yes."

"Who do we send in?" Baeder looked back at the broad concrete expanse between the Officer's Mess and the barracks.

"Ariana and Joaquin were the only ones not injured," Dietrich said. "Their colouring is right. They will be believed."

"And the cambion?"

"Once the children are in place, they have the pendants. They can call to them."

"I want to level their buildings, Dietrich. I want to burn them to the ground, and kill every living thing there," Baeder spat, the bitter fury shaking his frame, making the stick rattle against the ground.

Dietrich looked at him. That fury had been there since Draxler had pulled them from the burning building. He'd thought it might diminish, might ease with time but it wasn't. If anything, it was becoming more of an obsession with the fallen angel.

"We need humans, Eric," he said, his voice quiet, but firm. "Killing a population of that size would be … wasteful."

For a moment, he thought Baeder would lift the stick and take a swing at him, the rage-driven tremble through his body becoming more pronounced. Then he saw him control it, drag in a deep breath and push it back and down.

"You are right," Eric acknowledged after a moment. "Their lives in our hands will be significantly more painful than a moment's dying anyway."

Dietrich didn't respond. He turned away and walked back to the building behind them. Baeder was going to become an impediment to the plans they'd conceived with the others, he could see. It was a shame, but there was no getting around it. For the moment, he was still functioning and still useful. When they had retrieved the prophet and returned to Utah, however … he would let Draxler do it, he thought. It would please the cambion.

* * *

From the windows of the lavish office overlooking the parade ground, Crowley watched the two fallen as they conversed. The balance of power between them had shifted, he thought, Baeder's irrational anger overtaking him more and more. He wondered if Dietrich would take action to keep his brother under control or if would be left up to him to see that nothing got in the way of the fruition of their plans. Even fallen angels had power and if he did have to do something about Baeder, he would have to make sure that none of the others got bent out of shape as well.

Turning from the view, he walked back to the obscenely comfortable chair behind the desk and sat down. There had always been hunters in the world. As long as there had been things to hunt, at any rate. There was something different about the two Winchesters though, he considered carefully. It couldn't have been coincidence that they were the vessels for Michael and Lucifer. Nor could it have been coincidence that despite all the devil's planning, he'd fallen to them in the end.

"Alicia!"

The door opened, framing a tall, slender blonde woman who looked enquiringly at him.

"I need everything you can find on the Winchesters. History, rumours, likes, dislikes, the brand of toothpaste they use – everything," he snapped at her.

"Of course, sir." She started to back out, and he held up a hand.

"Start with the demons who were training under Alastair," he said. "One of them was in the pit for a while. Someone will have information about that."

She nodded and drew the door closed behind her and Crowley leaned back in the chair, elbows resting on the arms, fingers steepled beneath his chin. Always know your enemy, he thought to himself. He didn't, personally, believe in coincidence.

* * *

_**West Keep, Lebanon**_

"Wh-what's going on?" Dean asked, a little breathlessly, the last word drowned out by the soft groan that was forced out as his back arched up convulsively.

Alex lifted her head. "You don't want to?"

He gave a strangled laugh, unable to take in a deep breath through the sensations corkscrewing through him. "No, god, no, just … why?"

She didn't answer and he lost interest in the question as she moved her thigh over him, white velvet heat slipping down and enclosing him, thought disappearing altogether as his hips jerked under her and he was everted in expanding pulses of soft pressure, surges of pleasure pulled through him, each one reaching deeper in a quickening spiral.

* * *

'Kim said it's normal," Alex said, a half hour later, picking up the conversation when the aftershocks had stopped trembling the bed.

Dean was on his back, eyes closed, his body empty and loose and incapable of movement. He couldn't think what she was talking about.

"Normal?"

"For this stage," Alex clarified a little more, looking over at the faint frown that was drawing his brows together. "In some women. Being easily aroused and having stronger reactions – stronger orgasms," she added, smiling at his expression.

He realised that she was answering his earlier question. "Oh."

The smile was unconscious and he wasn't aware of it until he heard her snort and opened an eye to look at her. "What?"

"Stop smirking," she told him, her thigh slipping over his, and her hand wandering down his side. "You have to hold your end up."

The smirk widened as he closed his eye and stretched out under her touch. "Not a problem."

"Famous last words," she said, feeling a throb deep inside at the smug self-confidence in his voice.

* * *

Dean rolled over, feeling the creak and ache of well-used muscles and tendons in his body, pressing his lips against her bare shoulder as he eased himself out of the bed without disturbing her. She hadn't been kidding, he thought as he padded barefoot through the dark rooms to the bathroom, he might well die from another session like that. Not that it would be a bad way to go.

The association came whole and bright and he froze in place as the memory returned, the last few drops plinking into the bowl unnoticed as he saw again the empty cemetery, heavy headstones settling into the earth, unkempt with overlong grass and weeds. They'd been hunting a ghoul. In Pennsylvania. In Clarksburg, Pennsylvania.

The headstone had made him laugh, the connotation that the guy buried there had died in the middle of sex. Sam had given him his patented Sam scowl. Chuck had included the a part of the inscription in his story, not enough to give him the memory, just enough to feel the familiarity of it. He shook off absently and hurried out to the living room, a shiver zipping up his spine as he flipped on the lamp by the table and searched through Chuck's notes and typewritten pages.

His fingers curled around the page he wanted and he read it again. With the memory, the layout of the cemetery became clear. He knew where the gate was.

Was it enough, he wondered? Walking to the armchair, he sat down, looking at the handwritten notes Alex had brought back from the order. One of them had gone in alone. The dog hadn't seen whoever it was …

The _medallion_, he thought irritably. Of course it would hide him from Cerberus' attention, long enough to slip past and get through. He wouldn't even need a guide or a spell, he thought. In the vision the gate had been open – or open and closing – on its own. He just needed …

Time. He couldn't drive to Pennsylvania. Even in the susvee it would take days and he couldn't leave here for that long.

He got up abruptly, shuffling the papers together and returning them to the table, walking fast to the bedroom. The medallion was in the drawer of the nightstand and he pulled it out quietly as he dragged his jeans on one-handed, tucking it into the pocket. T-shirt, long-sleeved button-through plaid … not the leather jacket … not for Hell. He reached for the Army coat and yanked it on, sitting on the edge of the bed cautiously to pull on socks and his boots. His gear bag was in the hall, he thought. Just the knife, flask and gun. Easing the front door closed behind him, he ghosted down the hall toward the stairs, taking the flight up.

The top platform of the keep was empty and chilled, frozen snow packed into the corners and glittering dully in the faint light. Pulling the jacket closer around him, Dean looked up at the overcast sky, and closed his eyes.

"Cas? Need some help, man," he said, his voice low but clear, brows drawn together as he concentrated on visualising the angel. "Pretty sure I can get the demon tablet, if you can get me to the gate."

The flutter of wings was muted in the open air, and he opened his eyes to see the angel standing in front of him.

"Which gate?" Castiel asked shortly, reaching out to grip Dean's shoulder.

* * *

_**Newport, Rhode Island**_

The sky to the west was streaked in fading lines of red and salmon and lemon, a deepening indigo reaching out from behind them as the slim, white yacht motored quietly into the harbour.

_What was left of the harbour_, Peter thought, looking around. The yachts and motor boats that had filled the basin were mostly on the bottom now, broken up and scattered across the sea bed, an unseen, underwater danger to anyone coming in. They slipped into the lee of Goat Island and looked along the darkening shoreline for any intact docks.

"There," Elena said, from the shrouds, pointing a little ahead and to the east.

The yacht was securely moored to the floating concrete jetty in ten minutes, sails furled tight and covered, fenders hanging between topsides and dock, lines coiled and stowed away. Shamsiel sighed at the stillness of the water. The _Irin's_ face was hollowed out from weeks of being able to keep little food down.

In the soft light of the cabin, Penemue and Peter looked at the map spread over the table, the hunter holding a pair of dividers and measuring off a hundred miles from the scale at the lower edge. He swung the dividers across the paper.

"Sixteen hundred miles in the straightest line possible," Peter said, looking at the Qaddiysh.

"Seven weeks on foot," Baraquiel agreed.

"Less if we can find a vehicle." Elena looked at Peter.

He nodded. "The snowfall has been deep this year, across the eastern states and the Midwest. We'll need something that can handle it."

"The roads will also be bad," Elena added, her memories of the European roads still fresh in her mind.

"We'll look in the morning," Penemue said, turning to the galley. "Heaven will not aid us on this leg, for reasons of their own. We will get there as fast as we can get there."

* * *

The morning was pearl grey and dripping with moisture, the fog that had followed them to the coast swathing the dock and the trees and remaining buildings and fields and marsh in a clinging nacreous shroud as the sunshine tried to break through.

Peter walked along the snow-covered road, Penemue behind him, Elena following and the two Irin behind her. Despite the bitter temperatures the warmth of the sea close by was melting the snowfall and the sound of running water filled the quiet countryside.

They found the humvee in the underground garage of a modern, slab-built concrete block near the point. No domestic city car but the flat-sided, boxy military model, tyres and electrics intact, a full tank of fuel and a flat battery. Elena found a generator, tucked with an assortment of camping equipment and the pull-start functioned perfectly. Charging the battery would be an overnight chore, jumping it would take a few minutes.

The main bridge going south was in pieces and Peter turned north, threading through the silent and broken neighbourhoods that were largely overgrown with vegetation across the still standing Twenty-Four onto the mainland, turning west and south as they bypassed the larger populated centres.

"Can you feel it?" Shamsiel asked from the comfortably wide back seat.

In the front, next to Elena and Peter, Penemue nodded. "Yes."

He looked past the slim woman to the hunter driving. "We need to find someplace to stop, someplace we can hide. I do not know if they can see you and Elena as clearly, but we are being watched."

Peter frowned and nodded, and Elena straightened in her seat, her gaze scanning the sides of the road.

"By other angels?" she asked Penemue in an undertone.

"Yes."

"How can they see you?"

"They look for the energy we are emit," the _Irin_ said. "As we would watch them, and can see the Grigori if they haven't taken the precautions we're about to make."

"What precautions?" Peter asked, flicking a glance at him.

"You'll see," Shamsiel said from the back, his nose wrinkling up at the thought.

* * *

Bouncing on hard shocks along the narrow road, they wound through what once had been open fields and suburban tracts and was now a forest, the asphalt cracked and broken, humped up by the tree roots and dead grass stiffly black-tipped from frost and crushed under the thin icy slush. Peter's admiration for the car's previous owner was growing as the tyres bit into the slippery surface, and the stiff, independent suspension ignored the worsening state of the road.

"There," Penemue said, gesturing to the right. Through the trees, they caught glimpses of the steel and brick building, half its roof sagging and missing sheeting, but the rest looking to be intact.

Peter turned off, following the gravelled drive.

"No, drive right inside," Penemue insisted. Peter looked up at the rafters, black against the pale, overcast sky.

"It is sound," Baraquiel agreed from the back and the hunter drove them into the building hesitantly.

All three Qaddiysh got out and drew their knives, slicing through their forearms and using the blood to make sigils on the remaining walls. Peter and Elena watched them as they drew pouches from their belts.

"We need a fire, just a small one," Shamsiel said, gesturing to the woods beyond the building. Peter nodded and walked out, collecting smaller fallen branches and twigs as Elena moved through the interior of the building and gathered an armful of the dried grasses under the open roof. The fire was small but as Baraquiel put the small bronze bowl over it, the contents heated, flaring brightly for a moment and then melting together to form a thick black paste.

The Qaddiysh stripped off their jackets and shirts, and Elena flinched as Baraquiel drove the point of the black metal blade through the dark skin of Shamsiel's back, a bright red line following the tip as he carved a symbol into the man's skin.

"This is partly Raphael's," Penemue told them, shivering in the cool air as he waited his turn. "He was – is – the Lord of the Air, and it is the properties of Air that we will draw to ourselves, transparency and reflection and misdirection."

The circle on the smooth, ebony skin was exact, straight lines, joined with smaller circles forming a design within it. Baraquiel scooped the warm, black paste onto a fingertip and smeared it over the wound, mixing it with the blood that was still flowing. Shamsiel's breath hissed in, his back contracting involuntarily as pain filled him.

"The paste will make it permanent, the scars will remain, beyond our construct's ability to heal," the black-haired _Irin_ said, paling a little under his tan as he watched his brother's careful movements.

Baraquiel stood in front of him, holding out the knife and closing his eyes. Penemue carved the sigil over his chest, working fast and ignoring the clenching of muscle as the paste worked its way into the skin.

Shamsiel took the knife when he'd finished, and repeated the sigil over his broad back.

"Why didn't the Grigori do this when they fled to the east?" Peter asked Baraquiel, helping him on with his jacket.

"Some did," Baraquiel answered. "That is why we could not see them after the Flood. But some have always put appearance before anything else, and their pride and vanity have allowed us and probably our brothers in Heaven, to track them."

"You didn't know where they were?" Elena looked at him curiously.

He shook his head, long titian hair rippling back over his shoulders. "Heaven could see them." He gestured to the walls of the building, the sigils they'd drawn unseen from the inside. "Markings such as we made here are sufficient to deflect casual observation. And we were insulated in Jordan, insulated and deliberately not looking for our fallen brothers. We believed the Flood had destroyed them, believed that they were gone, because we wanted to believe it."

"Why did they align with Hell?" Peter turned to Penemue, passing him his shirt.

"The unsealing of the tablet reached out and touched everything," Penemue said stiffly, wincing as the cloth dragged over the fresh cuts. "We knew it. Heaven knew it. Michel told us that the Grigori have been active all these centuries, seeking out knowledge, practising the black arts … they are trying to find a way back."

"To Heaven?" Elena asked, astonished.

"Now that Raphael has gathered an army, he may take them back," Shamsiel told her. "He needs followers. They will make whatever bargain he wants and renege on the deal later."

"But Michael … and the Host … surely that is enough of a deterrent even to the most –" Peter said, looking from Penemue to Shamsiel.

"If Michael fights in open battle against Raphael, then Heaven might fall," Penemue said tersely. "The prophecy of the Second War was not ambiguous. Michael will do everything in his power to prevent outright war."

Baraquiel turned to the truck, opening the rear door. "Come, we must get to Kansas as soon as we can, before the Grigori can move an army against them."

* * *

_**Hell**_

The cemetery didn't look exactly as he remembered, Dean thought, staggering a little to one side as Cas released him. More trees had grown up around and through the plots, and only the gravemarkers that were made of stone had survived. He pulled the medallion from his pocket, slipping it over his head as he looked around. There had been a small mausoleum, to one side. The ghouls had been living in it and the clearing Chuck had described had been just beyond it.

"Dean, are you sure about this?" the angel said from behind him, following as he walked through the tall, dead grass.

"No," Dean said shortly. "But it's the only game in town."

"The gate that Chuck described, they don't open and close on their own," Cas pressed, lengthening his stride, the trenchcoat flapping around his legs as he hurried to catch up to the hunter.

"This one does," Dean said, slowing as he passed the mausoleum. Turning his head, he felt the sigh of warm air against his cheek, caught the whiff of brimstone on it. From the corner of his eye, he saw the air shimmer in the starlight, a sheer curtain rippling in a faint zephyr, turning a little more toward it, it faded and disappeared. "It's open now."

"The guard –"

"Won't see me with this," Dean cut him off, tapping the silver disc around his neck. "I know what I'm doing, Cas."

The angel remained silent, his doubt about that written across his vessel's face.

"Hell time's different," Dean continued, ignoring the angel's lack of faith in him. "I shouldn't be long – no more than a few hours, but you have to be here when I get back."

"I will be," Cas said. "Do you know –?"

Dean turned abruptly and walked straight for the shimmer, eyes slitted as he kept his head turned to the side. He missed the rest of Castiel's sentence as he stepped into a pocket of warmth, and the world disappeared around him.

The slip between the planes was similar to the sensation of being teleported by the angel. Blackness. Silence so loud it roared in his ears. No other sensations transmitted through his nerves – no sight or smell or taste or touch – and a bending, as if he were being turned inside out. His lungs burned as the nothingness continued long past what he expected, then he was in a long valley under a thundery-looking sky, facing a broad, slow-moving river.

_Acheron_, he thought distractedly, looking along the bank as he walked closer. In the distance he could see a low boat, with a wide, curved hull. He slid into the cover of the willows that lined this side of the river as the crack of a branch sounded on the other side.

_Not kidding about the giant dog part_. The canine had three heads, and a long, slab-muscled body, high at the shoulder and sloping down to the hindquarters, its coat long and shaggy, the guard hairs lifting and twisting in a wind he couldn't feel. _Wolf. Dhole. Hyena_. It seemed all three, the centre head undoubtedly that of a wolf, long muzzle and broad forehead, the eyes set in the centre and glowing ember red. The head to the left was carried lower, the shorter muzzle that of the dhole. The head on the right had the misshapen jaw and offset eyes of a hyena, small and dark in the massive skull. All three necks converged into an impossibly broad chest and enormous shoulders.

He didn't have anything definitive to judge the height against. Perhaps six or seven feet at the join between spine and shoulder, he thought. Each neck was adorned by a collar, glittering slightly in the carnelian light.

"I don't care what happens to the souls," a roughened voice came from the river, and Dean turned his head fractionally to watch the boat coming closer over the oily, black water. "Just make sure you deliver anyone you see to this gate."

British accent. Short, receding black hair. Dark eyes.

_Crowley_. Dean's attention sharpened as he recognised the demon. The boat was handled by a man – of sorts, Dean reconsidered the definition as he got a closer look – manoeuvring the craft to the bank skilfully with a long, single scull. He was tall and broad through the chest and shoulders, his skin tinted grey, or silver, his hair a wild red mane that spilled over shoulders and back. The boatman. Charon.

The demon stepped onto the shore and turned back to look at him. "No one gets through here without meeting the hound, understand?"

Charon nodded, pushing the prow of the boat off the shore and digging the scull into the water, the boat spinning on its long axis and moving downstream again. The boatman's face turned to the bank where Dean was hiding, the craggy, broken features partially hidden by a tangle of red beard, flat silver eyes passing over him without changing expression. He let out a soft exhale as the boat moved away, looking back at the other side of the river.

All three heads of the dog were lowered now, ears pricked forward as they listened to their master. Crowley's voice was too low for him to overhear the instructions to the hound, but he had little doubt that it followed the gist of the instructions to the ferryman. He wondered if the demon was normally this paranoid, or if what'd happened with the Grigori had gotten back to him.

On this side of the river, trees and grass were living, the willows he crouched under trailing long, delicately green fronds into the water. On the other side, however, nothing was alive bar the hound and the demon that he could see. No tree or plant of any description put its roots into the greyish-black soil that ran up from the river bank to the towering rock walls behind it. Puffs and tendrils of smoke rose from that soil further up river, curling into the unmoving air, grey edged with yellow, and added to the miasma of the low cloud overhead. He thought it was a pretty safe bet that the river itself was poisonous on the other side, despite the mythology about it. Crowley had been fairly careful not to allow the water to touch his meatsuit's polished black shoes.

Which left him with a single option. A not very appealing option.

The demon disappeared and the dog turned around, padding back through the rising vapours until it disappeared. He studied the rock wall carefully, taking note of the odd protrusions and colours that would mark it as a gate and he stood slowly, heading down the river's edge in the direction the ferryman had gone.

The river followed close to the curving ramparts of the valley wall. River Acheron marks one of the borders of Hell, Bobby'd said, years ago when they'd been trying to find a way out of the deal. The Styx flowed from it, a tributary leading to another entrance to the earthly plane. Charon plied the length of the rivers that flowed through the underworld, appearing and disappearing as needed, apparently.

He found a small stone quay a few hundred yards down river. Four people stood there, three men and a woman, none of them speaking as they stared at the dark gleam of the river's current.

Looking around, Dean realised that mist shrouded this side as well. Not the poisonous fumes of the pit, rising through the soil, but an ordinary mist, thicker and thinner as a vagrant breeze stirred it. A curtain between this antechamber and the real world, he wondered. Or a means of isolating the souls who'd been sent here? He looked back at the river as the boat bumped alongside the stone blocks, lengthening his stride to join the hellbound souls as they climbed listlessly on board.

The boatman stood in the stern, his face impassive, his hand held out. One by one, the men and woman dropped a silver coin into it, moving to the bow to take their seats. Dean crowded close to the last man, turning to follow him as his coin jingled against the others and stopping as the huge hand of Charon closed around his shoulder.

He looked up at the craggy face, eyes widening. "You can see me?"

Charon nodded, and thrust his open palm toward him, the coins on it painted with the red light.

"Uh …," Dean said, digging into his pockets for change. He pulled out the car keys, and a couple of tarnished pennies, looking back at the boatman's face. Charon shook his head, his gaze moving to the man's chest.

The medallion lay there, Dean knew, a silver disc reflecting the reddened sky in the same way the coins were. He shook his head. He needed that. He dug his hands into the pockets of his jacket, feeling through them in the futile hope that he hadn't cleaned them out anytime in the last three years. His fingers felt the small shape and he pulled it out. The coin was a half dollar, a 1949 Franklin his father had given him in 2003. He looked at it for a long moment, then dropped it into Charon's hand. The boatman closed his fingers around the coins, the flat, silvery gaze closing. Then he nodded and Dean breathed a sigh of relief, taking a seat behind the man he'd followed on board.

The boat drifted out into the current and began to move. It took less than a minute to reach the far shore, in front of the gate where he'd seen the dog and the demon. The prow nudged the black shore and the woman and men climbed out, Dean getting to his feet to follow them. He froze as the hand once again gripped his shoulder, the boatman's fingers like steel, cold and crushing the muscle to the bone beneath.

"Go between them," Charon rumbled softly. "Not at the end or the beginning."

Dean nodded mutely and the fingers released him. He hurried to the others, slipping in between the first man and the woman as Cerberus padded out of the mists, ropey, yellow saliva dripping from the open jaws.

Dean reached up and slid the medallion under his shirt, feeling the metal warm instantly against his skin. _Make or break_, he thought, his mouth drying out as the dog looked at him, three sets of blood-red eyes seemingly fixed on his face. The rock wall split apart ahead of the first man, grating over the ground, heat and the stench of sulphur blasting out over them. The dog's eyes moved to the man behind him, and he followed the woman into the slit of darkness, the sweat rolling down his face owing nothing to the furnace-like heat in the mountain.

As soon as they had entered the rock tunnel, the souls ahead and behind him vanished and he stopped, looking around reflexively. He could almost hear a sound at the edge of his senses, a scraping, chittering sound, like claws over stone. Could almost see the glimmers of light reflecting from something that wasn't within the range of his eye sight. Could almost smell the bitter acid smell of leathern skin and blood that wasn't really blood.

Almost. But not quite.

The memories flooded back, vast nets made of tightly tensioned wire and littered with hooks and chains; open areas of sand and rock and the snap of bone and screams and –

He looked around the dim tunnel. The light wasn't actually light, he knew. He could see shapes but they weren't really there. He could hear sounds, but they weren't there either.

_In my fear, I forgot who I was, forgot what I had come here for, forgot everything I'd known. And I wandered, lost and disoriented, for an unknown length of time._

Felix had pulled the account of the soldier who'd gotten into – and out of – Hell. Dean leaned against the rock and forced himself to focus, to remember what he needed to remember, to keep every other thought away. He needed a key to get back here. Reaching into his pocket he pulled out the Colt automatic. It was useless in here, but he'd carried it since he was twenty-five, and it would guide him back. He tucked the gun into a crevice in the wall, the ivory of the grip washed to a gruesome pink in the not-light.

_The tunnels were a maze, shifting as I walked down them. I beat my hands against the walls until they were bloody and still I would find myself back in the same passages, time after time. Until I remembered._

He'd never seen the tablet. Chuck hadn't described it too well either. Stone. Not large. Tapered edges. Engraved with a language that was not recognisable. His eyes screwed shut in frustration.

_I saw the sword in my mind, saw it shining in a pillar of light, and I felt the plane move around me, the endless corridors filled with wind become straight and still, the enormous chambers stop fixed in their locations. And I felt the sword, felt its presence as I walked forward, my eyes closed and its image clear in my head. And reaching out, my fingers found the hilt of it and I drew it to me._

He thought of everything he knew about it, everything he'd read, everything he'd been told. The imagination that had cursed and saved him throughout his life filled in the details from those memories, and he saw it finally, sitting in a pool of lamplight on a desk. He took a step forward and felt the vertiginous shift in the floor, the walls, the structure that surrounded him, felt the wrench in the spaces in his skull and the hollows between his organs, felt the heat disappear, the air still, the silence drop over him.

Dean reached out and felt the slightly oily surface of the stone beneath his fingertips, rough where the symbols had been carved. He opened his eyes as his hand closed around it, feeling an odd, doubling sensation in his mind as he looked at the stone, the symbols blurring for a moment and moving across the surface of the smoothed rock. Then his vision returned to normal and he picked it up, wrapping it in a layer of cloth and settling it in the inside pocket of his jacket.

Then he looked around. He was in a room, perhaps twenty-five by thirty feet, panelled in old, darkly stained timber, a small fire blazing in a Victorian fireplace on the other side of the ornately engraved and polished black desk in front of him. Richly coloured carpet covered the floor and glass-fronted bookcases lined two of the long walls. There were no windows, but otherwise it looked like a … gentleman's study.

_No accounting for taste_, he told himself sourly, turning around. He had to get back to the gate.

The gun was easy to visualise. He knew every curved line chased onto the polished chrome barrel, every seam in the ivory worn to its shape by his hand, every nick in the metal and every part, moving or otherwise. Closing his eyes, he saw the angle of it in the crevice and the wrenching sensation rose up around him, spinning without moving, the accursed plane changing itself around him and taking him back without him needing to take a step. When his stomach stop rolling, he opened his eyes, smiling a little as he reached out for the gun in front of him.

_Not so hard_, he thought smugly. Just the rock door, the river and the gate and Cas there to take them both home. He glanced at his watch, seeing the hands stopped at the precise time he'd entered the gate. Not so great, but it wouldn't matter that much. He couldn't been more than a couple of hours.

He tucked the gun back into the pocket of his jacket, fingers brushing over the tablet at the same time as he stepped forward to the rock wall and pushed.

Nothing happened.

He pushed again, both hands now, and the wall remained a wall, immovable and unchanged. Sliding his palms over the surface, he felt for the edges, moving to the left and right as far as the short tunnel allowed. It was smooth. Seamless.

Solid.

The way in was not, apparently, the way out.


	11. Chapter 11 Oaths, Keys and Bonds

**Chapter 11 Oaths, Keys and Bonds**

* * *

_**Hell**_

Dean stared at the wall in frustration, ignoring a creeping thread of panic. There was no sign that a door had ever been here.

_Do not lose it_, he told himself, Ellen's brief accounts of mortals becoming lost in Hell rising in his mind like bloated and unwelcome corpses. _There'll be a way, there's always a way_. He sucked in a deep breath and turned back to the pulsing corridor behind him, reviewing the possibilities he could see. He'd have to leave the gun here again, he realised. He needed a way to get back here. This was the gate that led back to Clarksburg, where the angel was waiting.

Even if he could find another way back to the Acheron, he thought uneasily, he had no more silver to pay the ferryman to cross the river and get back to the open gate. Back to his ride home. _Worry about that when you're out_, he decided, pushing the thoughts aside, and pulling the gun from his pocket. He tucked it back into the crevice. Right now, he needed a way out of here.

Memories pushed against him, triggered and strengthened by the almost-familiarity of everything around him. None of his memories of Hell would help him now and he shoved back at them. The power of many of the worst memories had been diminished, lessened somehow in their telling, in the reliving of them. In the understanding of what had happened and why and knowing she didn't see a monster when she looked at him. Some still had teeth.

He'd look around, he thought firmly. Look around and see what he could find. _Should've fucking well known it'd been too damned easy_, the stray thought filtered through and his face twisted in acknowledgement. Nothing was ever that easy.

The corridor ran both ways, bending a few hundred yards from the tunnel in which he stood. Neither direction looked more promising than the other. He shrugged inwardly and turned right, moving cautiously along the rough stone floor. In his peripheral vision, he caught movement, the rock walls blank and solid when he turned his head, the movement resuming as he looked away. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he was walking through the souls imprisoned here, through the demons goading and torturing them, but he couldn't see them directly, could only feel the weight of anguish and excruciating torment that filled the air of the place in a noxious, invisible fog. He wondered uneasily what that might do to him, breathing it in.

When he reached the bend, he saw the corridor continue, exactly the same as the stretch he'd just walked through, another bend perhaps three hundred yards further. There were no breaks in the walls, no doors, just the rough rock floor, the unevenly hewn walls, the pulsing non-light that was bleeding in behind his eyes and beginning to throb in his head. _This is bullshit_, he thought. He had the distinct feeling that beyond the next bend it would be the same, and on and on, as he walked through a place that wasn't real. That changed as it sensed what it was he feared.

Turning around, he started back, lengthening his stride a little. If the other end of the corridor was the same, he'd … he wasn't sure what he'd do, he realised. His options were running out fast.

He stopped abruptly a few minutes later, realising belatedly that he should've been at the tunnel mouth by now. The corridor stretched ahead and behind him, the bend a couple of hundred yards ahead, and he swore softly under his breath as it sank in that he was somewhere else entirely in the levels.

_The gun._

Closing his eyes, he visualised it, holding it clear and sharp in his mind's eye and he felt the swirling vertigo as the plane shifted around him. He opened his eyes to find himself standing in front of the short black tunnel, the gun wedged discreetly in a crevice in the rock in front of him, his heart hammering against his ribs.

What the _fuck_ was he going to do now?

An infuriated shriek shattered his thoughts, the noise electrifying his nerves, making him jump and swing around. Voices. Foot steps. Boots. More than a couple. The rattle of metal on metal. He looked up the corridor and backed fast into the tunnel, as shadows leapt on the walls of the bend to the left.

"More fucking trouble than she's worth," a guttural voice said, getting closer.

"'e wants 'er trussed an' ready," a second, higher voice replied. "Figures she knows where it all is, bein' the Devil's whore an' all."

Pressing hard back against the rock, Dean watched two men with black eyes walk by, a struggling woman held tightly between them, her mouth clamped shut by one meaty hand of the larger demon.

"Mothering –!" the larger man swore and whipped his hand away, staring at the blood flowing from the palm.

"I'm gonna fucking rea–" the woman shrieked at them before the other man slapped his hand over her mouth.

In the darkness of the tunnel, Dean frowned as something about the voice, or the delivery, tweaked at a memory.

There was a muffled curse and a thump and he eased himself a little past the wall to see the corridor. The woman was standing now, her feet and both hands trapped in the rock wall and floor, her face twisted with rage as she spat again at her captors.

"Poxie, bleedin' tart," the smaller man said, wiping the saliva from his cheek and backhanding her with casual force, her head snapping back into the wall behind it.

"Come on, she's going nowhere now," the deep-voiced man said, stepping back out of her range and glowering at her.

They walked down the corridor in the other direction, not looking back as the woman hurled a string of blistering inventive and anatomically detailed curses after them.

Dean stepped out into the corridor and walked cautiously closer to her. She was somewhere around five six, he thought, thin and pale-skinned, dark, stringy hair hanging around her face and dark, finely arched brows over glaring dark brown eyes.

She swung her head back to him and he started before realising she wasn't looking at him. The medallion, still doing its job, he thought. There was something familiar about her. Something that triggered a desire to pull out his knife and stab her.

On the other hand, he thought, dry-swallowing as he checked the length of the corridor in both directions again, she was obviously a prisoner of Crowley's and there was an outside chance she might know something that he could use. He lifted his hand, pulling the medallion from under his tee shirt and pulling the thin, silver chain over his head.

He watched as her eyes widened dramatically in front of him, her mouth dropping open as he became visible to her.

"Dean Winchester!" she said, the surprise vanishing as a slow smile curved her mouth. "Damn, that's some trick."

"Do I know you?"

The smile widened. "Oh yeah, Deano, you know me. And Sammy, well, he knows me inside and out." She glanced behind him. "He here too?"

_Meg_. The thought coalesced instantly and his hand moved to the hilt of the knife before he'd registered what he wanted to do, remembering the dark-haired vessel telling Bobby to kill him. She saw the movement and shook her head.

"Go ahead," she told him, her voice dry. "Beats what's waiting for me anyway."

He hesitated and looked at where her hands and feet were trapped in the rock. "You make more enemies, Meg?"

"A lot more," she agreed readily. "What are you doing here?"

He ignored that, looking back at her. "What's Crowley want with you?"

She shrugged, glancing away. "He thinks I know where some of Lucifer's toys are hidden."

"And do you?"

"I might," she said, looking back at him. "What I'm more interested in is why you're standing there, wondering if you can safely get me out of the rock without me killing or abandoning you, and making conversation, Dean?"

He scowled at her all-too-accurate insight into his thoughts. "If I can get you out of that, do you know how to open a door back to the river?"

For a moment he thought she was going to smile, and if she did, he knew he was going to hit her. But she didn't. The dark eyes narrowed at him thoughtfully.

"When you came in here, didn't you have a plan for getting out?" she asked him, one brow lifted mockingly. He turned away, clamping down on a surge of frustrated anger. She couldn't help but twist the knife, he thought caustically.

"You can stay there and rot for all I care," he said, struggling to evince an indifference he wasn't feeling.

"I can get you out," she told him, the humour gone from her voice. He turned back to her warily. "But it's an even trade, Dean. We go together."

"No." He folded his arms and stared at her. "No way."

"Then have fun finding a way out," she said, tipping her head back and closing her eyes.

_Goddamned_ demons. The sooner he closed the fucking gates, the better off they'd all be. He stared at the floor, wondering if there was any way he'd be able to welsh on the deal. He didn't think she'd leave him an opening for it, once she was free.

Meg heard his deep exhale and smiled inwardly. This would make things so much easier, she thought.

"Alright," he gave in abruptly. "How do I get you out?"

"Get your knife out," she told him. "Needs your blood and mine."

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Kansas**_

Sam walked into the big kitchen, rubbing his eyes. His sleep had been filled with nightmares and he was having trouble shaking them off today, the growing sense of events careening out of control around them getting stronger, even in the daylight hours.

He stopped as he saw Adam Milligan standing by the coffee pot. The young man had been assigned to the keep's garrison after the debacle in Amarillo and he hadn't seen him since then. Hadn't wanted to see him, his memory of Adam's slack face in the confusion of the attack on Dean still powerful.

Adam turned and ducked his head as he saw Sam, swallowing the rest of his coffee in two big gulps and almost dropping the mug into the sink behind him.

"Sorry," he mumbled, walking around the other side of the island bench with his head down as he hurried to the door. "I'll get out of your way."

"Adam."

Dean hadn't been that worried by what Adam had done, Sam thought. But then, he'd never really considered Adam to be family. It'd been his idea that their half-brother was closer to them than any of the other young trainees. It'd been his hope that in Adam, Dean would have someone else to back him up. That realisation filtered through painfully. He knew why he'd wanted that. Knew he was still afraid of failing his older brother. But that wasn't Adam's fault. That'd been an expectation he'd never even articulated to the younger man. And if it'd been anyone else, standing there when the vampires had come through, he would've written it off as just lack of experience and nerves. It was because he was blood that he'd expected more from him.

Adam hesitated, looking at him nervously.

"I'm sorry about the reassignment," Sam said, gesturing vaguely to the patches on the boy's jacket sleeves. "I – I overreacted when Dean was taken."

Adam shook his head. "No, I'm not a hunter," he said. "This is actually better."

Sam looked quizzically at him, unsure if that was the truth or a way to end the conversation. He sighed. "I froze plenty of times with my brother and father on hunts," he said slowly.

Looking away, Adam shrugged slightly. "Not when one of them was in danger, I'm guessing."

Memories slid into Sam's mind, memories he'd have rather left buried. Leaving Dean to run away, not even thinking about the repercussions or the way his brother would feel. Losing him in a haunted prison. Leaving them both again to go to Stanford. He'd hurt his brother worse than Adam ever could've of dreamed of, he thought tiredly.

"Adam, I've done worse," he told him quietly. "A lot worse. That's probably why I took it out on you."

For a moment, Adam considered that in silence. It might've been true, he thought. He couldn't see that it mattered particularly now.

"Me and Dean, we've lost a lot of people. Too many," Sam added, feeling his way through what he suddenly needed to say, to explain. "If you – I – I'd like the chance to get to know my brother."

"I appreciate that, I do," Adam said, looking around the room. "But, you know, with all that's gone on, I have to wonder if that's a good idea."

"Wouldn't hurt to try it out, would it?" Sam asked, leaning back against the counter.

"You and Dean, you're something special here." Adam turned to face him, meeting his eyes finally. He'd had a lot of time in the last few weeks to think about what'd happened, what he'd done and why. "People know you, know who you are, hold you in regard, Sam."

"That's not –"

"Lemme finish, okay?" the younger man said, taking in a breath. "No one here gives a rat's about me. I'm a blow-in who happens to be related to the man who killed the devil. That's … that's okay, I can deal with that," he said quickly to forestall the argument he could see in Sam's expression. "I didn't realise it at the time, but that idea of me came with a lotta expectations. And I screwed them all up in Texas. Now, I'm just like everyone else – no one pays much attention to who I am, or what I do. And I – I think I'm comfortable with that."

Sam looked at him, nodding. "That's fair, I get that," he said. "And I can see why that's a good thing, Adam. But you're still my brother. That's not going to change."

Adam looked away uncomfortably.

"You know what our father's biggest problem was?" Sam said suddenly.

Adam sighed. "No."

"He really loved us, all of us," Sam said. "He made some fucking horrible mistakes, but he could've cut us all loose, put us into the system, not given your mom his number … he could've focussed his life on revenge and forgotten about us. He didn't. He kept me and Dean with him because he was afraid of what would happen to us if he didn't. He did his best to keep you and your mom clear of what he did, but he couldn't not see you at all." He shrugged at the young man's neutral expression. "He did the best he could."

Adam looked at him. "I know he did, Sam. The thing is, he couldn't have done worse if he'd stayed with Mom, if he'd let us grow up together. Could he?"

* * *

Dawn came with a deep chill and Sam pulled his jacket tightly around himself as he got out of the pickup and trudged through the refrozen snow up to the keep steps. Chuck's third vision in as many days and Anson couldn't find his brother anywhere. He needed to be back at the library, working on it, not running around looking for Dean.

Climbing the stairs to the apartment, he thought of what Adam had said. What would their life have been like if John'd stayed with Kate, he wondered, smiling a little derisively at himself at the what-if scenario. If he and Dean had grown up with Adam. If they'd been a family. He'd been seven when Adam had been born. Would he have still wanted so desperately to get out? Would Dean have been so devastated about that, with another brother to protect and look after?

He shook his head. John Winchester would never've put any of them in such a risky position, staying in one place, living an ordinary life. He knew that his father had known almost from the beginning about the demon and what it'd done to him, what Mary had done. Jim's journal had detailed the painful saga of their lives and their father's choices and lack of choice clearly.

Knocking on the door, he looked down at his watch. If Dean was sleeping and Anson just hadn't knocked hard enough –

Alex opened the door, the soft knit robe covering her from neck to ankle as she peered sleepily up at him. "Sam, what's wrong?"

"Dean here, Alex?" he asked, looking over her head down the hall.

"No," she said, stepping back. "I don't know when he left … do you want to come in?"

He hesitated then nodded, walking past her to the living room, looking back over his shoulder as she closed the door and followed him. "He didn't say anything?"

"No," Alex said, moving past him as he stopped near the sofa and going on into the small kitchen. "We were looking over the handwritten notes last night, and we went to bed late. He didn't leave a note – I thought he'd just gone over to the order."

"He's not there," Sam said distractedly, walking to the table by the armchair and looking down at the pile of notes on it. The top page detailed the cemetery that held the gate. Under it, was one of the handwritten pages. Under that, he saw as he lifted the pages aside, a glossy printout of a fuzzy black and white image. After a moment he picked out the subjects, his breath catching slightly.

"He might've gone to talk to Jackson," Alex said from the kitchen. "They've almost finished the fortifications to the farmhouses now, and I know he and Riley wanted to ask Dean about getting the trainees over to do the wardings."

Sam put the picture down and looked again at the other two pages. "No, I checked with the farms before I came out."

"What's happened?" Alex asked him as she carried out two cups of black coffee, handing him one.

Dean had been very, very specific about the information flow to Alex and Sam shrugged very lightly. "Chuck had another vision."

She frowned as she sipped the coffee. "That was quick. Does it relate to the army?"

"No," Sam said, his eyes skimming over the page describing the cemetery again. "No, this one doesn't seem to be related to anything else."

"What was it about?"

"It's – it's not really about anything," Sam said, drinking his coffee distractedly as something in the account of the cemetery twitched at the back of his mind. "It's like the notes, just fragmentary pieces of something we can't piece together."

"Did you bring it with you?" Alex asked. Sam nodded, putting down his cup and the papers and pulling out a thin folded sheaf of papers. He handed them to her and picked up the typed page again.

"Did Dean say anything to you about this description of the cemetery?" he asked Alex. She looked up from the pages and shook her head.

"No," she said, her eyes narrowing a little as she took in his expression. "Is there something to it?"

"I don't know," Sam said, exhaling as he sat down in the armchair. "Something about it seems … I wouldn't say familiar because it's not that strong a feeling, but there's something there."

"You two've seen a lot of action in cemeteries," Alex said, watching him. "Maybe it's similar to one you've been in?"

"Maybe."

She looked back at the scrawled handwriting on the pages she held. Sam was right, she thought, deciphering the careless scrawl slowly. It was fragmentary.

_The hill. The hill was bleak and bare. The hill was steep. It was steep and strewn with rocks. The shots were loud. LOUD! _

She frowned at the emphasis. "How did Chuck seem after this?"

"Agitated," Sam answered her, looking up. "He said he couldn't see what was happening, only flashes of images and sounds. He said it's never come to him that way before," Sam added, his brow creasing up as he tried to remember exactly what Chuck had said when he'd handed the notes over. "Usually, it's like he's standing apart, just an observer. This time, he said it was like he was in the middle of it."

_The laughter was shrill and hoarse, a crow's cry against the louring sky. Dean ran, dropping to his knees and the whole world seemed to hold its breath in the silence that filled the narrow ravine. _

_The demon's rage filled the room, filled the tunnels and the caverns and the endless abyss._ Crowley's rage, she wondered absently? _The necromancer turned and he shrank back from the visage that had been hidden. One side of the man's face was … melted. There was no other way to describe it. As if it were tallow and someone had held a candle too close, the skin had dripped and sagged, the shiny, hairless brow almost hiding the empty eye-socket. One side of his mouth lifted, the other remaining stubbornly immovable and an unholy glee filled the remaining pale eye at the prospect waiting._

"This seems out of order," Alex said slowly. "When Maggie took out the Grigori's house in Taos, is it possible they were burned but not killed?"

Sam felt the ghost of the memory he was looking for come closer then fade away again. He looked over to her, replaying her question to himself.

"Sure, I guess," he said. "Why?"

"The necromancer – didn't Jerome or Jasper say that the Grigori had been experimenting with black magic in World War II?" she asked, looking back at the paragraph that was nagging at her. "He could be referring to one of them as a necromancer?"

Sam leaned forward curiously. "Okay."

"If they escaped the bomb, but were burned, it might explain this description," she continued slowly. "I don't know why, I just feel like the bit about the hill and the laughter comes after this description."

"So Crowley went and got the Grigori from New Mexico, maybe, and took them somewhere else? There's no army mentioned in those notes."

"Maybe because this bit happens before … or after … the army attacks," Alex speculated. "The notes he wrote before were about Hell, they seemed to be out of line with the linear narrative of the rest of the visions."

"We won't be able to figure it out unless we get some kind of timeline," Sam said, getting up and walking to the sofa and sitting down beside her to read the page again. "What about the next bit?"

_The clearing shone with the purest white light, emanating from the man who stood to one side, the great wings folded behind him proclaiming him more than man, more than mortal. Dean and Sam approached him warily, stopping as the light brightened and faded, the bright moonlight seeming dim after the heavenly incandescence._

Alex stared at the page. "That's not Cas, is it?"

"Doesn't sound like Cas, not with wings," Sam agreed uneasily. It sounded more like an arc. Did Michael want a pow-wow with Dean? He couldn't imagine a reason for the archangel to meet with them. Not now, at least.

Leaning back against the sofa, he tried to make the pieces fit. Beside him, Alex rubbed her fingertips slowly over her temple, unaware of the gesture, as she attempted the same thing.

"It doesn't follow the first visions," she said after a few minutes of silence.

"It doesn't follow the last flashes he had of Hell either," Sam added, closing his eyes. "And why are these pieces coming out of whack with the rest?"

"Maybe someone's changing things – Cas told Dean that the lines of destiny could not be changed, when he went back to Lawrence before he was born – but he also said that Dean's been changing the lines ever since –" she cut herself off abruptly, looking back at the pages. Sam looked at her, a rueful smile tugging at his mouth.

"Ever since I said 'yes' to Lucifer," he finished for her, his tone gentle. "You don't have to tip-toe around it, Alex, I know what I did."

"If Dean is changing things around, then Chuck would be playing a kind of a catch up, wouldn't he?" she asked tentatively. "Trying to see far enough ahead when each line could be changed at any moment?"

"But only Dean's changing –" Sam stopped suddenly as at least some pieces fell together in front of him. "He found the fucking gate."

Alex's head snapped around to look at him. "No, he would've told you, told me, told someone if he was going to try to get the tablet."

"No, he wouldn't," Sam snarled, shifting forward in his seat and looking at the pages. "He figured out the gate's location – car's still here, so I'm guessing he called Cas."

Alex drew in a breath as she looked back down at the pages. "If he's got the tablet somehow – then the demon's rage is explained. And possibly that's why you both go to see the archangel?"

Sam didn't hear her, getting to his feet, fury burning in his veins. He should've known, he thought. Dean would never've let him go along on a gig like that, not into Hell.

"He had the medallion, the one Death gave him," he said, extrapolating as he paced the room. "Probably figured he could sneak past Cerberus with it."

"He'd still need a way to open the gate, to get in – and back out," Alex said, following his thoughts.

"Did he look at the all the texts that Bobby's been going through?"

She shook her head. "No, he was focussing on the location."

"Idiot!"

* * *

_**Hell**_

"That feels better," Meg said, walking cautiously across the corridor and turning back to him. "Much oblige."

"Open the door," he snapped back at her, pulling a cleanish bandana from his jacket and wrapping it around it the cut on the back of his arm.

"Not so fast," Meg tutted at him.

"I swear if you even think of –" Dean snarled, one long stride taking him across to her, his fists bunching up in the front of her jacket.

"Dean, settle down," Meg said, feeling her feet lifting from the floor. "Crowley has the Colt."

The words penetrated and his fingers relaxed involuntarily, slipping from her as he tried to work out if she was telling the truth or it was just another diversion.

"Where?"

"In the rooms he uses for an office, on the highest levels," she said. "Same place you found that, I'm guessing."

She gestured at his jacket and his eyes narrowed. "How do you know what I found?"

"Dean, please," she said, shrugging and straightening her coat. "You've walked deliberately into Hell and it wasn't to rescue anyone. Crowley's had the tablet for just shy of six months now, of course you'd be looking for it."

"What makes you think we'd even know about it?"

"Are you fishing for a compliment?" she asked drolly, looking at him from under her lashes. "Not even you and Moose are that dumb."

"Is Crowley looking for the others?" he asked, ignoring the jibe.

"Yep," she said briskly. "We can have this conversation on the way, can't we?"

"I didn't take note of anything else in that office," he said, stepping back as she stepped toward him.

"But you remember the Colt, right?" she asked, taking another step toward him. "Every detail of it, I'll bet. And I didn't get that good a look at it, so sack up and hold me close."

She stepped up to him, sliding her arms under his jacket and curling them around him, laughing a little against him as she felt him tense. "Just see the Colt, Dean."

Closing his eyes he dragged the memory of the long-barrelled revolver into conscious recall. Black metal, the cylinder had been worn, smooth and the pentagram had been crudely carved into the grip, as if it'd been done in a rush.

Hell swayed and swung around them and he felt Meg's arms tighten around his ribs, felt her ribcage rise sharply as she pulled in a deeper breath.

"Get off me," he growled when he opened his eyes, the panelled room as he'd left it however long before. He pushed Meg aside and walked to the desk. "Where is it?"

"Last time I was here, it was sitting on the desk," Meg said, looking around. "But Crowley's so into the lord of the manor routine, he could've stashed it anywhere in here." She walked to the wall where two large paintings were hanging, a bucolic green landscape that bore no resemblance to anywhere in the United States, and a darkly painted portrait of a plain woman sitting in a single beam of light.

Dean walked around the desk, pulling open the drawers, feeling a trickle of sweat trace its way down his neck and into his collar. Ransacking the office of the King of Hell – twice – wasn't what he'd had in mind for the day.

"How come Crowley made king when Lucifer died?" he asked, more to divert his thoughts than an actual interest.

Meg paused as she lifted the bottom corner of the landscape. "That's a good question," she said sourly, dropping the corner and moving onto the next. "Rumour has it he found a spell to imprison the Fallen and just staged a coup d'etat, taking over before anyone else had time to round up support."

"Politics in hell," he muttered to himself, crouching beside a locked cupboard door and pulling out his picks.

Meg glanced over at him and smiled. "Yeah, even here."

The lock clicked and he opened the door, peering inside. He pulled out a heavy wooden box and got to his feet, setting it on the desk. It was also locked.

"He must've found the Throne though," Meg continued, lowering the corner of the portrait and moving to the bookshelves.

"The Throne?" Dean asked distractedly. The wrench kept slipping and he pulled out the tools, wiping his palms on his jeans and trying again.

"Lucifer's Throne," Meg clarified, opening the first glass-paned door and pulling the books out of the shelves by the handful. "He made it when he was cast down. It contained all his memories, all his knowledge about the powers of the souls." She looked over her shoulder at him. "He was an angel, you know. Hell works the same way as Heaven so far as the power goes. And the Throne is what made the passing of the rule of Hell possible, especially to a crossroads demon."

"Crowley's a crossroads demon?" That explained the red eyes, he thought, easing the pick over the last pin. There was a soft click and the lock gave up.

"He was," Meg said, walking to the desk to look at the box. "He was in charge of the deals, passing the contracts to Lilith until Sammy took her out, then to Lucifer."

The Colt lay on the black velvet interior of the box, twenty-seven bullets in a small box nestled under the barrel.

"Good, let's go," she said to him as he picked it up. "You can kill Crowley with that. King or not, he's just a human-born demon."

Tucking the gun through his belt at his lower back, he put the box of ammunition into his pocket.

"Back to the gate," Meg said quickly, stepping close as he came around the desk and wrapping her arms around him. "Get a move on, I gotta bad feeling."

_The automatic in the crevice. Ivory grips. Chased barrel. Thirteen in the mag and one in the chamber_. Closing his eyes, the gun materialised behind the closed lids and he rocked into Meg as the room spun around them and disappeared.

* * *

_**Chappaqua, New York**_

Peter swore as the road dead-ended in a high snow-covered bank. Elena looked through the windshield, a glint of metal catching her attention to one side. She pointed at it and Peter slammed the vehicle into reverse, the back swinging as he hit the accelerator. Behind them, two trees crashed down onto the road, blocking it completely and he hit the brake as the animals came out of the woods to either side.

"Skinwalkers?" Peter looked out the window, counting them.

Elena nodded. "_Cousine de loup-garou_, yes, I think so too."

In the back, Shamsiel looked at the smooth stretch of snow to the right of the car. "Peter, turn around, we can get down there."

Peter twisted in the driver's seat and nodded abruptly. He hit the accelerator, hearing the engine revs climb and swung the wheel as he yanked on the hand-brake, the rear end swinging wide with a high rooster-tail of snow, two of the dogs disappearing under the rear wheels, their high yelps silenced as the heavy vehicle humped over them and he aimed for the bank.

"The building!" Baraquiel gestured furiously at the square stone shape just visible through the trees, raising his voice over the baying of the pack following them. Winding down her window, Elena cocked the assault rifle and slid halfway out, holding on and firing one-handed as they bounced down the rough ground and over the ditch.

"Don't waste your ammo," Peter yelled at her, hearing the chatter of the gun. She waited for the car to regain a smoother surface and aimed more carefully, three dogs disappearing as Peter swung across the unmarked white snow to the entrance.

He pulled up in front of the wide metal roller door and Elena scrambled out of the window, dropping to the snow and backing toward the door, Penemue following her, keeping out of her line of fire and unlocking the simple bars, pushing it aside into the building.

Driving inside, Peter watched the mirrors, seeing the muzzle flash of the rifle a fraction before he heard the sharp clatter. He stopped the car and grabbed his gun as he swung out of the driver's door, running and firing through the open doorway as Elena backed in and the skinwalkers stopped a hundred yards from the building.

Penemue and Baraquiel pulled the door closed and dropped iron pins into the sleeves, locking them in. The sudden banging on the postern door on the other side of the building made them all jump and Shamsiel ran for the door, Elena right behind him as they heard the cracked voice from outside.

"Help! Please, help me!"

Elena nodded at the _Irin_ and he unlocked the door, opening it a short way, his boot jammed under the inside edge as he looked out. On the other side, a tall, thin man stood, shivering in the cold, his eyes wide with fear.

"They've taken my family, please, please, help me," he begged them. His clothes were threadbare and torn, the boots on his feet loose and without lacing. Elena chewed on the corner of her lip as she heard the baying approaching the building and the man's head snapped around to stare at the corner. "_Please_, don't let them get me!"

"In," she said, and Shamsiel reached out, his hand closing around the man's arm and dragging him in as Elena levelled the barrel at him. The _Irin_ shouldered the door shut and ran the bolts home, top, bottom and middle, turning to walk behind the man as he crabbed sideways across the floor toward the vehicle, trying to look everywhere at once.

"Thank you," he said fervently to Elena and Shamsiel, nodding to the other men as they approached. "Thank you, thank you."

Peter moved to the car, leaning in across the passenger seat to the small bag he kept under the glove box. He pulled it out, unzipping it as the man stopped beside the quarter panel, Elena still holding the rifle on him.

"What happened?" Baraquiel asked quietly. The man turned to him, his hands spread out helplessly.

"There were a few of us, a few weeks ago," he said, looking from Baraquiel to Penemue, to Shamsiel and Elena. "We were in Austin. There was a big sandstorm. Then we started heading north, looking for other people, looking for food. We stopped here, and there were still a few of us left, after – after everything," he stopped speaking, gulping in a breath, shaking his head. "Then the dogs came. And at first, they were friendly, you know. We hadn't seen dogs since – since – the dogs were friendly and we'd seen cats and, uh, other animals, but no dogs, so we thought, but then – then they attacked us and I got out but they –"

Penemue watched as the man's face crumpled up as he was talking, tears spilling out and running down his cheeks.

Peter closed the passenger door of the car, walking to him. "Hold out your arm."

"What?" The man looked down at the slim silver blade disbelievingly. "But –"

"It'll sting," Peter said prosaically. "That's all."

Penemue felt his mouth drop open as the man's skull elongated and sprouted fur and he dropped to his hands and feet, the clothing ripping and falling from him. Pale pink lips drew back from a muzzle full of sharp teeth as the hindquarters tensed for the leap at the hunter. The single shot was loud in the enclosed space, ringing in their ears and the lean, shaggy dog dropped to the ground with a squealing yelp, the transformation back to human involuntary.

"So … this is a skinwalker?" he asked Peter, gesturing at the man, lying naked on the floor and holding his thigh, the round black hole through the muscle glinting red as warm blood spilled over his skin to the floor. "The transformation is by will alone?"

"Yes," Peter said, crouching beside the man and laying the edge of the silver knife's blade against his throat. "How many?"

"More than you can deal with," the man snarled furiously.

"Oh, I don't know," Elena said softly, taking a step closer, her gun levelled at his head. "We have silver. We can handle quite a few."

"What's happening here?" Peter pressed the knife a little more firmly into the skin, a thin curl of smoke rising from the edge as the flesh began to char along the line. "Skinwalkers do not hunt in large packs."

"Our Father is here," the man cried, flinching back from the burning in his neck. "New orders. New order. Our time."

Peter glanced at Elena. "Your father?"

"Yenaaldlooshii," the man crooned, his face softening suddenly. "Our walking Father, the one who made us all. He says that soon the others will come and we must be strong, stronger than the rest … the population is so limited now."

"The human population?" Baraquiel asked, stepping closer.

The monster's face sharpened, his eyes narrowing as he stared at them. "We must ready."

Peter glanced at Elena and she nodded. "Well, they'll have to be ready without you," she said coolly, her finger slipping over the trigger and pulling it smoothly. The shot rang out and the man toppled sideways to the floor, the second hole centred precisely between his wide, staring eyes.

Outside, there was furious burst of howls, drawing out and up in an ululating crescendo. The Qaddiysh looked around as they dragged the man away from the car.

"How do you want to play this?" Elena asked Peter in a low voice. "If there are as many as he implied, we won't be able to take them all in the open."

Peter nodded. "And the rest of the town is probably blockaded as well." He rubbed a hand over his jaw, scratching absently at the stubble that covered it. "We'll let them come to us."

Elena looked around the interior of the building. "I'll have a look around. We can probably get up under the eaves."

* * *

Peter looked up as Elena walked back toward the car. "Anything?"

"There are at least twenty out there," she said, setting the gun against the car and taking the bottle of water he offered her. "They'll attack after dark, in human form, I think, climb onto the roof and try to sneak in."

"I agree," he said. "What do you think of the first-born's plan?"

She shrugged. "It might work on the survivors who don't know what's happening," she said thoughtfully. "But not on the others. He said that their 'father' wanted them to be strong before the others came – talking about the vampires and werewolves, you think?"

Peter sighed. "Yes, I'm sure of it."

"We need to get out of here," Penemue said, walking up to them, the assault rifle looking incongruous in his hands. "The sooner we can trap Nintu, the more likely the populations will survive."

"We are running to multiple schedules, my friend," Peter told him dryly. "In any case, we need to get out of here first. We have another two cases of silver and then we're back to hand-to-hand. Single shot, Elena, you and Penemue and Shamsiel cover all the possible ways in. Baraquiel and I will go out, through the windows above the half-roof and take out whatever moves on the ground."

Elena finished the water and handed him back the bottle, lifting her arms and stretching upwards. "Yes. An' in that case, I will have a nap until dark."

She turned away, and Peter watched her walk to the back of the car, opening the rear doors and slipping inside.

"You should also sleep, if you can, Peter," Penemue said quietly beside him. "Shamsiel and I will watch until dusk here."

The hunter glanced sideways at him for a moment, wondering if he'd imagined the very faint humour in the man's tone, then nodded slowly. He lifted his rifle and walked back to the rear of the car, opening the door and looking in.

"Room for another in there?"

Elena moved across, the rustle of the synthetic sleeping bag loud in the small space. "_Oui_. There is room."

He climbed in and closed the door behind him.

* * *

_**Hell**_

"Blood," Meg repeated succinctly, looking the wall. "Blood is the key to open the doors."

Dean stared at her. "Why not yours?"

She rolled her eyes. "Because I'm in here and demons can't use it to get out – or did you think we all stay in here because it's so much fun?"

"What?"

"You're a soul in flesh and blood that doesn't belong here, Dean," she explained with exaggerated care to him. "Your blood will open the doors because you're not supposed to be here."

He scowled at her tone. "How much?"

"A couple of quarts should do it," she said casually, looking down the corridor.

"How do I know you're not just shining me on?" he asked, looking at her suspiciously. Two quarts was a third of what his body held. He'd be fucking lucky to crawl out after losing that.

"You don't," she said with a sigh. "But since I need to get out as much as you do, I would think the math was relatively simple."

"I don't trust you, Meg."

"Really? I'm shocked," she said, teeth snapping together. "Look, there's nothing I could do that would prove I'm on the level, Dean. I swear to you this will work and I will make sure you get back to the real world safely, alright?"

He shook his head stubbornly. "You're right, there's nothing you can do to prove it."

"I didn't have to tell you about the Colt," she said. "Could've just gone straight out."

He thought about that. She was right. "Then you wouldn't've had a way to kill Crowley either."

It surprised a laugh from her. "Oh, Deano, I got a lot more interesting ways to kill that son of a bitch than a single bullet," she assured him.

He moved closer to the rock wall and pushed up the jacket sleeve on his left arm, rolling up his shirt sleeve and drawing the knife from the sheath. The artery ran down the inside, he thought uneasily. He wasn't going to have much use of the hand afterward.

Meg reached out and touched his shoulder. "Have you got anything I can pull the cut together with when it's done?"

He looked at her and shrugged out of the right side of his jacket, handing her the knife. "Use the sleeve."

She took the knife and slit through the seams, dragging the sleeve free, and handing him back the blade.

"As soon as it opens, I'll bind it tight," she told him. "You might feel dizzy –"

She stopped talking as his eyes met hers and the sharp edge of the knife ran down his forearm, a rapidly welling line of blood following the tip. Leaning up against the rock, Dean supported his arm on one knee, the blood spilling out slowly onto the ground.

"Who's in there with you?" he asked suddenly.

Crouched next to him, her shoulder against the wall, Meg lifted a shoulder slightly. "No one you have to worry about," she said. "She killed her grandmother for her pension account to get out of the nothing town she lived in and get a ticket to New York. She'd be down here anyway."

She watched the flash of disgust pass over his features. "We can't just take anyone, you know," she added, tipping her head back against the rock. "There has to be something that gives consent to us taking over."

His head snapped up as he thought of Sam, of Bobby. "Bullshit."

Meg shook her head. "No. It's not like the angel possessions, but the soul must feel as if they could deserve it, somewhere. Guilt. Or doubt. Something that feels that punishment is deserved."

Dean looked away. He knew his brother's self-doubts, and Bobby had his reasons for being able to put away the cheap, rotgut liquor he did from time to time. But he had just as many, or more, reasons to hate himself than they'd ever had. "Why not me then?"

He looked back at her silence to find her smiling a little quizzically at him. "What?"

"No question you're not riddled with guilt and shame, Deano, but there're two reasons no demon could ever possess you, without your consciously given consent."

He ducked his head at the tacit admiration in her voice, her face. "Yeah?"

"You know what you've done and you know you've paid for it," she said lightly, looking down at the blood running out of him onto the rock. "And there isn't a single chink of weakness in you, no crack in your soul to let us get in. You're the vessel of Michael," she added, a little bitterly. "You wouldn't be his vessel if you weren't impervious to moral corrosion."

Her voice was beginning to fade in and out, and he looked at her, his face screwing up as he forced himself to focus on her. The wall against his shoulder moved fractionally, a deep, grinding sound in the lowest registers, vibrating through his teeth.

"Come on, tiger," she said, leaning close to him. "Time to go."

The door was opening and he felt her take his arm, wrapping the sleeve tightly around the wound, drawing the edges together under the binding. She pulled him to his feet, her strength astonishing, and slid his right arm over her shoulder.

"Where's the medallion?" she asked tautly, and he fumbled it out of his jeans pocket.

"Put it on, it'll hide both of us, I think."

Lifting the chain over his head awkwardly, he felt the disc touch his skin as he tucked it beneath the neck of his t-shirt, and the world flattened out. He didn't believe her assertions of his strength. There was probably some other, more mundane, reason for the fact that demons had steered clear of him, he thought disconnectedly. Couldn't think of it right now, but there had to be.

His fingers wouldn't grip the haft of the knife properly and he felt Meg pluck it from them, opening his mouth to protest when he smelled the poisonous stench of the riverbank and the overwhelming scent of wet dog just outside and closed it again.

Cerberus was pacing as they slipped from the crack in the ravine wall, back and forth along the stretch of the river in front of the door. The dog's six eyes moved restlessly, the heads turning from side to side as it looked for the intruder it could feel but not find in its domain.

Meg was pushing against him, forcing him to turn right, along the wall and away from the river. He wanted to protest that it was the wrong way, but his knees were shaking and he was acutely aware that it was only the slight girl beside him holding him up and keeping him moving. And the dog was already agitated without them having an argument about direction in front of it, he thought blearily.

It was a few hundred yards to the bend in the river, where the rising vapours of the escaping gases from the underworld obscured the entire section of ground between rock wall and moving water, but it felt like a thousand miles. He looked down at the rough dressing on his arm, seeing the blood seeping through it and shook his head a little, trying to clear the grey fog that was closing in around the edges of his vision. He felt Meg shrug beneath his shoulder, changing her grip on his right arm and tightening her hold around his back, taking more of his weight as she hurried them both into the concealing miasma.

The puff of fetid, rotten air in front of them stopped her dead, and Dean stumbled at the abrupt halt, lifting his head and opening his eyes. In front of them, Cerberus stood, taller than him, he recognised belatedly, the dog's chest the width of three men, the massive heads lowering as it exhaled again, its breath blowing over them, stirring Meg's hair and filling his nose and mouth with a stomach-turning blast of decomposition-tainted wind. He forced himself not to gag – _not to move_ – as the blood-red eyes of the wolf's head stared straight at him, the nose lifting and casting this way and that for the scent it was sure was there.

Close-up, he could see that the wolf's head was the decision-maker. To the left, the dhole's mouth was open, a long grey-green tongue hanging out, the shorter, broader teeth gleaming like old ivory and dripping strands of saliva that were thick and sticky, filled with small, writhing creatures. Dean's stomach gave a shuddering heave as he realised he was looking at maggots in the ropey drool. He shifted the direction of his gaze without moving. The head on the right of the wolf's was uglier still, he thought vaguely, the hyena's coarse fur striped and brindled, the long, black-tipped ears swivelling like radar dishes. Set deep into the sockets of the flattened skull, the small eyes searched relentlessly for them.

A splash in the river behind them diverted the dog's attention, and Dean watched as Cerberus's outline began to fade, dissolving into transparency until only the red eyes staring at him were left, hanging in the air, then they too vanished. For a moment longer, they stood completely still, breath aching in their lungs. Down the river, there was the soft thud of the boat hitting the bank and they exhaled, long, quiet expulsions of air in perfect unison.

Meg's fingers tightened against his side and he was ready when she took a step forward, slightly amazed that his legs were working at all.

Half-listening to the sounds behind them, the souls disembarking and entering Hell, they walked faster along the river bank, navigating through the thickening fog by the sound of the river beside them.

"What happens if you touch the water?" he breathed.

"You die," Meg answered flatly, her voice as soft as his.

"How do we get across then?" he asked a moment later, as the river turned again.

"Shut up," Meg whispered back. He glanced down at the foreshortened view he had of her face, seeing her hair hanging in damp rat's tails around it. Despite the heat that seemed to rise from the ground, he felt cold and a shiver passed through him. He felt her arm tighten around him, her fingers close harder on his wrist and he leaned against her a little more.

"Not far, okay?" she said, taking his weight stoically. "Just stay upright a bit longer, Dean."

He was fucking tired and that was the truth, he thought, trying to pick up his feet so that he didn't send them both crashing to the ground.

The mists began to thin out, some kind of light that wasn't a pulsing reddish non-light, illuminating the ground ahead of them. Here and there, clumps of dead, dried-up grasses protruded from the blackened soil, and he could see the far bank now, shockingly green and lush-looking.

Meg slowed and turned them to the left, supporting him as she led them down the gently sloping bank. The river was no more than thirty yards across here, and Dean blinked in the brighter light, seeing the stones without registering their meaning.

"This is where we cross," Meg said in a low voice, glancing back over her shoulder up the bank. "We have to hurry, Dean."

He nodded and looked at the stones, their purpose slowing sinking in. "Stepping stones?"

"Yeah," she said. "You have to make each one, okay? If you get stuck, the dog can get you."

He thought of the maggots, squirming in the saliva, and straightened up, dragging in a deep breath. _Definitely don't want to end up as puppy chow_. The distances between the stones seemed … long … for stepping stones. Leaping stones more like it.

"Dean," Meg said, snapping her fingers in front of his face. "I can't help you with this, you have to do it on your own, you understand?"

"Yeah, I got it," he said, a trace of annoyance colouring his voice. "I can do this."

Meg looked doubtfully at him. "I fucking hope so."

She eased out from under his arm, keeping her hand on him as he swayed slightly. It was hard to maintain a single thread of thought and he reminded himself that if he touched the water, that was the end of it. No life. No family. No closing the gates or getting rid of the monsters or seeing the people he loved again. The thought anchored him a little more firmly and he found his balance, nodding to the demon and watching her turn to the edge of the bank, gather herself and jump.

She landed easily on the first stone, perhaps a yard and a half away. Not so hard, he thought, brows drawn together as he watched her make the second jump. That one seemed a little further, and the third just that much more of a stretch. _Come on, get on with it_. Medallion or no medallion, if the hellhound figured out they'd escaped, it'd be on them and that too would be the end of it.

He walked down to the edge of the water and filled his lungs and jumped. The first rock was broad and flat, the surface dry and grippy under his bootsoles. He looked back at the bank and saw the vaporous mist swirling slightly. Turning back to the next stone, he jumped again. The second rock was slightly smaller, with a slant to it and he felt his right foot slide a little toward the water, snatching it back, his breath whistling a little in his throat as he looked down at the river, the surface black and opaque. _No dips today_, he told himself, looking to the next rock.

It was further. Quite a bit further. A standing jump and not enough blood and he began to wonder if he was going to make to the other side. _Just do it_. He crouched a little and jumped, the water flashing by under him and the third rock was much smaller than the first two had been, moisture over its lumpy, uneven surface and his feet slipping, his heart jumping into his throat as he over-corrected and teetered on the edge on one foot. He regained his balance and felt sweat dripping from his hair and rolling down his face, lifting his arm to wipe it away as he looked across the river.

Meg had reached the other side, and was standing there, watching him. There were another four rocks and he realised that each was spaced a little further from the previous one, each one was smaller than the last and on the last one, he could see the slick gleam of moisture over the surface. He felt his heart sinking and he shook off the doubt that seemed to be rising proportionally, inwardly baring his teeth. He'd just gotten in and out of Hell, and he'd be damned if he was going to fuck up the last stretch.

Not giving himself any more time to think about it, he jumped for the next one, heart pounding against his ribs as he landed on the edge and leaned forward, thrusting hard against the opposite side as he took off for the next one. Too short, he thought, staring fixedly at the surface, stretching out as far as he could and willing himself to reach it. He did, just, swaying as he readjusted his balance and bent over, his hand resting against his thigh as he breathed in and out, shedding the fear and oxygenating his blood. Two more. Just two and he'd be across.

He jumped and made the heart-contracting stretch again, his feet sliding out from under him as he landed, the sharp twist of his ankle wrenching his knee, the combination draining him, his shirt dark and clammy now with the sweat that had soaked through it.

"Don't look back," Meg shouted from the bank. "One more, come on!"

_Christ_, he thought wearily. _Don't say 'don't look back'_. He resisted the impulse and looked ahead to the next rock. It was three yards away, tiny, shining with the lapping water that spilled over it. He could see the greenish moss that coated one side now. It was impossible. Fucking impossible.

"Come on!" Meg's voice held a shrill note and he didn't look around, just dug his toes into the crevices of the rock he was standing on and jumped. _Don't land on it_, he thought in mid-air, _just use it for an extra stride_. A gust of wind blew past him and he knew that the dog was close behind him, the reeking fetor of its breath pushing against his back. His foot touched the slick surface and the muscles of his leg and back and abdomen contracted, absorbing the landing, building momentum, and he sprang out, four yards from the fucking bank and there was no way he was going to make that jump, no run off, no goddamned energy, just adrenalin surging through him like a bolt from a high voltage line … he saw Meg lean out from the bank, heard the panting behind him, and stretched out as far he could, his hand touching the demon's as the snap of teeth cracked the air and his foot touched solid ground. Meg's strength yanked him clear of the water, her weight thrown back hard, and they both hit the ground, rolling away from the river.

Dean breathed in the clean, living scent of the soil and the grass, eyes half-closed. Rolling onto his side, he levered himself up on an elbow and looked back at the river, seeing no sign of the dog. Mists shrouded the far bank, the stones – ordinary, flat, black stones – evenly spaced across the water seemed simple enough from here to jump across on; the light, not quite sunlight, but warmer and brighter than it'd been on the other side, sparkling on the rills and wavelets of the current as it passed around the rocks.

He let himself fall back, closing his eyes and feeling his heart slow down, his breathing ease.

"Like to cut it close, don't you?" Meg said sourly from a few feet away.

He opened an eye, rolling it toward her. "Quit griping."

She laughed and sat up. "Get up, let's get the fuck out of here."

For a moment, he wondered what he was doing, here with this demon – this demon who'd been responsible for destroying his friends, his family. The memory of his father's face, bleak and anguished as he'd pulled the truck off the road and told them that Jim was dead. Murdered by this demon next to him. The panic in John's voice as he heard Caleb die on the end of the phone line with Meg telling him she'd kill them all if he didn't bring the Colt. His jaw tightened and he lay still, letting the memories and the pain and the remembered fury and frustration wash through him.

Meg watched the expressions cross his face, watched him tense up. The past had risen for him, she thought, all the things that she'd done to bring him here. All the things her father had done. She couldn't explain to him that things had been different then. The whole world had been different. She was almost certain that he wouldn't listen. And it didn't matter anyway. She'd done all those things, done them and revelled in them, in her power, in her position. She couldn't tell him that she regretted it now.

"Why are you helping me?" he asked, his voice hard.

"You're the only game in town," she said simply.

He sat up, turning to look at her. "Not good enough."

"That's all I got."

"I killed Lucifer, Meg," he said, watching her face. "Drove the Spear right through him."

She looked away. "I know."

"You telling me that you don't want me dead?"

"No," she said, looking back at him, her face smooth and expressionless. "No, I'm not telling you that, Dean." She hesitated for a moment. "I would gladly rip you into small, unrecoverable pieces for what you've done. But I've learned something along the way here, something I didn't know back in the day."

"Thrill me."

She glared at him. "I don't have to explain myself to you!"

"Yeah, this time, you do," Dean said, rolling to his knees stiffly. "'Cause we're not going anywhere until I know where you're coming from."

"It's the cause that counts, Dean," she told him, looking away, the words coming out unwillingly. "One thing, one mission, one purpose to life. The reason to get up every morning and strap on the weaponry and go out into the world." She looked up at him. "You already knew that. It's built into your genes." She shrugged, looking back at the river. "Took me a little longer to figure out."

He frowned at her. He did know it. He couldn't imagine how a demon had come to the conclusion that had driven him his whole life.

"And the cause is?"

"Crowley."

"Crowley?" he asked doubtfully. The demon might've been the King of Hell but he wasn't sure that with everything else going on he was the biggest problem.

She smiled humourlessly at him. "Crowley is an anomaly," she said shortly. "Everyone else, the angels, the archdemons, the humans – hell, even the monsters – know their place and what they're supposed to do. Crowley doesn't have a limiter like that. He wants it all. And he's got just enough street-smarts to figure out how to get it. He's looking for the angel tablet – for all of them actually – so that he can control Heaven and Hell and the creatures locked up for all eternity, so that he can manipulate the leftovers of the population – so that he can control everything."

Dean studied her, recognising the passion in her delivery but still suspicious of her motives. "And your cause this week is to prevent that?"

Biting back the retort that sprang to mind, she nodded. "Yeah, that's it."

Getting to his feet, he wondered about how far she'd go. "I keep the Colt."

"Yeah, Dean," she snorted softly. "You do."

She watched him sway, eyelids fluttering shut as dizziness hit him and got up quickly, sliding her arm around his ribs and drawing his arm over her shoulder. She could feel him tense at her touch, ignoring it as she settled his weight over her shoulders and straightened her knees.

"Then what was in this for you?"

"Aside from being spared several hundred years of excruciating torture?" she asked mockingly. "I'm out. And you have what he wanted plus the means to kill him. And I have a lot of ideas of how to get him where I want him so that things can return to normal."

"Normal?"

"Back to the natural order," she clarified tersely. "You do understand about the natural order, don't you?"

The sarcasm pricked at him and he looked away. "The gate's through those woods."

"About time," she muttered, catching his stumble with the first step and holding him steady. The rough dressing around his arm was soaked through, the bleeding much slowed but not stopped. She didn't want to have to carry him through the gate.

What she'd told him had all been true. Not the whole of the truth, of course, but he hadn't asked further and that suited her just fine. Digging up information, watching the Grigori as they'd started to move, she had a good idea that the man walking in front of her was the nexus to all the things that had wrecked the natural order of things, and he still didn't believe it, didn't want to believe it, maybe. But he would come to understand that what he did, what he put into action, would change the world several times over before he'd finished. And she would be around, watching and pushing when she could, to make sure that it all went the way it was supposed to.

She felt the gate as they approached it through the woods. It was pulsing slightly, with the same unnatural heartbeat that could be felt in the depths of Hell. Something was holding it open, she thought, a tremor of fear skittering up her spine. Gates didn't stay open. And they didn't open and close on their own. Someone had used a lot of power to make this one behave in this way.

A zephyr of cold air brushed past Dean's face, the scent of snow and ice on it, and he stopped, turning his head slowly until he caught the shimmer of the gate in the corner of his eye.

"It's there," he said, taking a step closer to it.

Meg felt the power of it crawl over her skin as she walked with him. "We have a deal, right?"

He looked down at her consideringly. If he left her here, she probably wouldn't be able to do much more harm. He thought he could get himself through the fucking gate if need be.

What she'd said about Crowley, and about her own plans for him, was still resounding in his mind. The demon might've been just a human-born crossroads hellspawn, but he had the power of every soul in Hell now. And he'd learned some things along the way here as well. Utilising strengths where he found it, for one. Strategising for the bigger picture for another. Death had told him he stood on the nodes of the lines of destiny. That his actions would be the ones that counted. That was too big. It was unimaginable, that responsibility. He needed help and there was a good chance, better than even odds that the demon holding him upright could help with what he had to do.

He let out his breath, and nodded slowly. "Yeah, we got a deal."

She didn't respond, just tightened her grip on him and took a stride toward the pulsing fabric of the join between planes, feeling his stride beside her as they stepped between.

* * *

Castiel blinked as Dean stumbled out of thin air with a woman wrapped around him, his arm soaked bright red and his skin pale.

"Dean," he said, striding forward to catch them, flinching back as he saw the demon's face under the woman's. He lifted his hand automatically.

"No," Dean snapped, catching the angel's wrist as Meg let go of him and backed away.

"She's a demon!"

"I know," Dean said, glancing over his shoulder at Meg. "But for now, she's, uh, neutral."

"Demons are not neutral, Dean!" Cas retorted, pulling his arm free and stepping to one side.

Meg looked at the angel warily as Dean swayed back and forth.

"Cas, it's a long story, but we're letting her go."

Castiel turned to look at him, eyes narrowing as he saw the lack of focus in Dean's eyes. "What happened?"

"Lost some blood," Dean muttered, his knees sagging. "Use a little help here."

He glanced past the angel, seeing Meg nod and vanish as Cas reached out and touched his forehead with two fingers. The … _energy? life-force? whatever it was_ … flowed into him and he drew in a deep breath, eyes closing as the angel restored him.

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it," Cas said, looking around and sighing as he realised the demon had gone. "What happened?"

Unwinding the blood-soaked sleeve from his arm, Dean wiped ineffectually at the now-smooth skin, wondering how to recap in fifty words or less.

"Getting in wasn't too bad," he said, looking up at the angel. "Getting out again, not so easy."

"You didn't know how to open the gates from the inside?"

Dean looked away and shrugged. "I got the tablet. And a bonus gift. So, let's go home."

The angel stared at him for a moment in frustration, then reached out again, fingers closing hard around his shoulder.

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Kansas**_

The jarring contact with the ground brought his eyes open and he looked at the illusions surrounding them in disappointment. He hadn't thought to specify a destination to the angel, thinking he'd be returned to the top of the keep. Glancing at Cas now, he realised that the angel had made his own decision about the tablet.

"Subtle," he said sourly to Cas as the illusions disappeared with the clunking thuds of the locking rings of the safehold undoing in front of them.

"The prophet needs the tablet," Castiel said blandly.

"What the hell, Dean!?" Sam burst through the door and Dean felt the gust as Cas disappeared.

"Where's Chuck?" he asked, walking to meet Sam, his fingers curled around the stone inside his jacket.

"This is totally unacceptable, even for you," Sam snapped, gesturing behind him in answer to his brother's question. "Why the hell didn't you come and get me?"

Dean looked past him and walked down the stairs to the door. "It was an impulse thing," he said, waving his hand dismissively, slowing and turning as they passed into the building and Sam stopped to pull the door closed behind them.

He pulled the tablet out, unwrapping it and handing it to Sam.

Taking the stone, Sam felt a wave of repugnance wash through him, his fingers tightening hard on the slick surface against the desire to throw it from him. He wondered briefly if it'd had the same effect on his brother.

"You're the one who's supposed to close the gates, Dean," he hissed at him as they walked down the stairs. "What are we supposed to do if you die before that happens? Draw straws?"

Dean sighed. "I'm here, aren't I?"

"What the fuck happened to back up? To trusting me? To looking out for each other?"

They reached the situation room and Dean stopped abruptly, turning to face him. "Look, it worked. I got the tablet, and something else. I'm alive. It's okay. Can we just drop it now?"

"No, we can't drop it now," Sam retorted, his worry and anger of the last few hours fanned again by Dean's refusal to see what could've happened. "Alex was worried about you."

_Low blow_, Dean thought, turning away. He'd thought he might be back before she'd woken, or he would've made an effort to leave a note.

Jerome looked up from the book on the table as they walked up the stairs and into the library. "Back from Hell, I understand."

Dean resisted the impulse to roll his eyes. "Where's Chuck?"

"Here," Chuck said softly, walking into the room from the hallway at the other end. "You got it?"

"Time to get reading," Dean agreed lightly, seeing the trepidation in the writer's face.

Sam walked across the room. Looking at the stone in Sam's hands, Chuck turned away, walking to the table and sitting down. "From what I've seen, I'm probably going to get sucked into that thing," he said to no one in particular, looking at the polished wood surface. "I need a pen and paper."

Dean took the notepad and a pen from in front of Jerome and slid them along the table, looking at Sam. Chuck caught them and positioned them on the table, then reached out for the tablet.

When his hands touched it, the engraved symbols lit up, a flash of light that seemed to burn right through the slender man, showing bones and veins clearly through the skin. Chuck froze, the tablet gripped tightly in his hands, his gaze fixed forward but, Dean thought, looking inward.

"Chuck?" Dean said tentatively, moving along the table. Sam leaned closer on the other side.

"Chuck!"

"He can't hear you," Jerome said prosaically from the other end of the table. "He's become the conduit. He won't see or hear anything now until the tablet stops speaking to him."

Dean glanced at the professor and back to the prophet. "Will he be okay?"

Shrugging, Jerome looked back at his book. "Let's hope so."

"Stay with him," Dean said to Sam, straightening up. "I'm going back to the keep. Let me know when he starts writing."

"This isn't over," Sam said irritably.

"Of course not." Dean smiled and turned away, turning back after a couple of strides. "Oh, and Sam?"

"What?"

He drew the Colt from his belt, grinning as he saw Sam's mouth drop open.

"Where was it?"

"In Crowley's office," Dean said, slipping the gun back through his belt. "Just changed the whole game again, huh?"


	12. Chapter 12 By Order of the Demon King

**Chapter 12 By Order of the Demon King**

* * *

_**February. Hell**_

The demon looked at the empty rock wall and back at the two men in front of him.

"Well? Where is she?" Crowley asked, his voice curt. There were times when he realised that the general population of his kingdom were less than bright. In fact, there were times when he considered that the majority of the souls contained in the pit were not worth the effort it took to turn them into demons.

The larger man's eyes were black, corner to corner. It should've been a terrifying sight, Crowley thought bleakly. Instead, accompanied by the steady flop-sweat of the man in front of him, it was merely annoying. Like looking at a bug flattened on a windshield.

"She was here, this is where we left her!" the demon muttered, his gaze flicking nervously from side to side, travelling along the length of the corridor in both directions. "She couldn't have gotten out, she was in the rock."

"Uh-huh," the King of Hell remarked noncommittally, looking at the smaller man.

"'e's right, guv, we puts 'er 'ere yesterday, an' she couldn't've gotten out," he wheedled, hands twisting around each other like restless snakes.

Crowley sighed. Proportionally speaking, the numbers from east London were high down here.

"And yet …" he said, lifting a hand and waving it at the empty wall. "Are you suggesting that someone wandered in and released her?"

"N-n-no, sir," the larger demon stammered. He didn't have the faintest idea of what could've happened. He knew, in some detail, what would happen – to him – if the King decided to make an example of him.

"So there exist's a possibility that you did not, in fact, secure her well enough?" Crowley asked, looking from one to the other.

"She were in there tight, guv!" the smaller demon protested. "The rock 'ad 'er!"

Turning away, Crowley walked slowly away from them, considering the possibilities. He should have been there to supervise her incarceration himself, he knew. The fallen were taking up far too much of his time with their war-mongering. And the daughter of Azazel was a unprecedented anomaly in and of herself. Born nephilim and raised by a witch on the earthly plane, she had, according to the rumour mill, given up her soul willingly to Hell to join her father in the pit. And had willingly suffered the centuries of torture under Alastair himself to become her father's most powerful tool. That kind of loyalty was rare indeed and when the oldest Winchester boy had killed her father, she'd transferred it immediately to Lucifer.

She loathed him with a hatred that had long passed obsessive, Crowley knew. She'd been plotting against him for the last few months with an eye for detail that showed her heritage. And she knew far too much – about him, about the workings of the accursed plane, about his predecessor – he should've killed her outright.

If she _had_ escaped … the thought of what she could do, down here, roaming freely, brought a faint sense of alarm. The _office_! The realisation brought a convulsive jerk. He vanished, the air rushing to fill the space he'd occupied with a soft pop.

In the corridor, the demons looked at each other and begin to walk quickly in the opposite direction. Neither were very old. Both had heard of the abyss and what happened to those who had failed the new king. Better to make themselves scarce and lay low.

* * *

Crowley looked around the office slowly, eyes narrowed. His gaze crossed the desk without registering what should have been there and wasn't, once, then jerked back to look at the empty spot in disbelief.

_No._

_Nononononononononono!_ Reaching the desk in a stride, his hand passed over the smooth wood as if he were expecting to feel it, invisible but still there and his face spasmed as his hand met nothing.

_NO!_

She'd been bound into the meatsuit they'd found her in, he thought feverishly, bound and trapped in it. Not even her power could've broken her free. Even if she could escape from the rock, and make it here, she could not've touched the fucking tablet, not without agony. Even he could barely handle it, the power it contained too alien to what had become of his soul. For her it would've been a thousand times worse. And she could not have opened a gate, not even a door to the borders. Her blood wasn't a key, none of the ingredients necessary for the opening were here … if not escape then what, he wondered furiously?

_Rescue?_

Who would rescue her, he asked himself, pacing across the office. No one even knew she was here. He threw himself into the chair behind the desk and grabbed the bottle sitting on the polished black surface impatiently, dropping the decanter's cut crystal stopper as he poured the whiskey into his glass. Turning, he looked down. The stopper lay on the Persian rug beside the desk. Above it a thin shadow lay against the wood frame of the desk in a way that was completely wrong.

Pushing the chair back, Crowley stared at the sliver of shadow that lay between the cupboard door and its frame. The door was open. He kept it locked.

He yanked it open, fingers scrabbling for the box that was kept in there, feeling the lack of expected weight with a deepening spiral of anxiety as he lifted it to the desk's blotter. His fear was instantly sublimated in a rage that forced the vein to one side of his forehead into a thick, rapidly pulsing blemish as he stared fixedly at the empty interior of the velvet-lined box.

The tablet. And the_ Colt_.

Meg had been here, he knew that with a certainty that shook through his frame like a peal of thunder. But not alone. She couldn't've gotten here alone. And very, very few knew about the Colt, knew it well enough to recognise it if they came across it by accident.

Erupting to his feet, his arm swept violently across the desk, sweeping box, glass, decanter, blotter and files to the floor in an explosion of noise and debris and the sharp, acrid smell of spilled whiskey. The goblet was in the cupboard on the other side and he snatched it out, closing his eyes and snapping his fingers.

The larger of the two men who'd been in charge of securing the prisoner appeared beside him, blinking at the sudden transition, unaware of his danger until the knife had transected his throat completely and the blood from his meatsuit was pouring out of him, filling the cup held under his arteries.

Crowley threw the man from him as soon as the goblet was full, murmuring the incantation softly and stirring the surface of the warm, thick liquid.

_What's happening there?_

_There was some coming and going between the castles. Nothing else._

_Did anyone leave? Anyone come back?_

_Not that we've seen._

Crowley stared at the goblet. Four demons were watching the town and the surrounding countryside, from a distance. They couldn't get closer, the patrols encompassed a five mile radius around all the keeps they'd built there and what he wanted to know was generally of a look-and-alert nature, following the attack on the forward post of the Grigori.

_Watch them closely._

_Yes, my liege._

He leaned back in his chair, glancing down at the wreckage of the decanter and glass, registering finally the sharp smell of the wasted whiskey. He pushed the fleeting pang of regret aside. He had more.

His assistant had found a considerable amount of information on the Winchesters and he'd come to the conclusion that they were indeed spoilers, created by design to upset and cock up the various threads of destiny that others had put into action. The killing of Azazel and the raising of the eldest from the pit – on _God's_ orders, his source had said succinctly and more than once – and the killing of Lucifer. The younger one had destroyed both Samhain and Alastair and had then killed Lilith, although according to one demon, that had been the plan all along. It beggared belief that a human could have destroyed three of the most powerful demons in the hierarchies of Hell.

The English girl had told him that the Winchesters had had the Colt in their possession for a long time. But if they hadn't left Kansas, how would they've been able to get into Hell to retrieve it, even if they knew of the way the plane worked.

He leaned on his elbows on the desk. The Colt. And the tablet. They were the only ones who needed both. However they'd gotten in, Meg had undoubtedly shown them the way out. And connecting the dots … as few as there were … he thought that the Winchesters were the ones holding his possessions now.

It would put the time-table forward. That would please Baeder, if no one else. But he was going to need a diversion, something irresistible. Leaning over to pull out the top drawer on the left hand side of the desk, he withdrew a small, white candle. Raphael would have to handle that part himself, Crowley thought with a small spurt of delight that he could actually involve the archangel in getting his hands dirty for once.

* * *

_**West Keep, Lebanon**_

Alex poured coffee into five mugs and set them on a tray, lifting it and carrying it into the living room.

"You could've been trapped down there for good," Ellen snapped at Dean, shifting automatically as Alex moved past her to set the tray on the low table and transfer the mugs of steaming black liquid to the table top. "What good would that have done anyone?"

"What kind of a dumb-assed idea was it to go off without even tellin' anyone, or takin' backup?" Bobby added, his voice hoarse.

Glancing up at him as she moved his cup in front of him, Alex saw the muscle jump in Dean's jaw. She carried the tray to the table behind the sofa and sat down next to him.

"How's Chuck?" she asked, taking advantage of the thirty-second window of silence as Bobby and Ellen picked up their cups.

"Still reading," Bobby growled, his gaze returning to Dean. "He hasn't moved, except to write."

"What's he writing?" Dean asked, deciding to ignore the rhetorical questions of the previous half-hour rant. So far, he'd had Rufus and Maurice, and now Bobby and Ellen yelling at him. Sam was sitting in the armchair kitty-corner to the long sofa, glaring unrelentingly at him, no doubt waiting his turn.

"We don't know," Ellen snapped, her scowling expression unmollified by the change in topic. "Marla is giving him fresh sheets as he fills each one, but the handwriting itself is pretty bad, and we're only getting bits and pieces."

"Not visions, then?" Alex looked from her to Sam.

Sam shook his head. "No, this seems to be a direct translation of the tablet."

"Meg said that the archdemons had been imprisoned," Dean said casually, putting his cup down as he looked at Bobby. "She thought Crowley figured out a spell of some kind to keep them out of the way while he took over."

"Katherine's been working on figuring the hierarchy in the pit," Bobby said, his tone a little more reasonable. "She says this Crowley isn't even mentioned in the lists."

"Unsurprising, he was a crossroads demon, apparently," Dean agreed. "Meg didn't know how he found the throne, but that's how he got the power."

"Which was supposed to go to one of the archdemons?"

"That's what she said." Dean shrugged, leaning back. "Do we have much on the archdemons?"

"Plenty," Ellen nodded, recalling the information she'd been going over in the last six months. "They were the first-fallen, the ones who fell at Lucifer's side. They were all he had available to torture for the first thousand years, until God decreed that Lilith would go to Hell."

"What happened to all the human souls that were evil before then?" Alex asked curiously.

"They were thrown into the bottomless abyss," Bobby said shortly. "There were no demons back then, at least, none but the elemental kind – those souls just existed in endless pain."

"Meg said that Crowley is a sport, of a kind," Dean told them, leaning forward a little. "Doesn't play by the rules, doesn't follow the protocols, has a big, ambitious agenda. She said he was more dangerous than anything else because he'd manipulate everyone to get what he wants."

"By 'everyone' she meant?" Bobby lifted a brow at him.

"Heaven, Hell, everyone," Dean said. "She said he didn't care about the other tablets."

"This is Meg we're talking about, Dean," Sam interjected suddenly, his coffee slopping up the sides of his cup as he leaned toward his brother. "Meg, who killed Jim and Caleb and tortured Dad. Tried to kill you and forced Bobby into sticking a knife into himself, Meg."

Dean turned to look at him steadily. "I know."

"And all of a sudden you trust her? Trust everything she tells you?"

"No," Dean said mildly. "I don't trust her. But I'm damned if I can think of a reason for her to lie about this."

"Hello? Demon? She lies like breathing, man," Sam retorted, his brow wrinkling. "Why didn't you kill her when you got the Colt?"

"Because I was stuck in Hell," Dean countered irritably.

"Then when you got out?" Ellen asked him.

"I made a judgement call," Dean told her, his tone sharp. "She's more use hunting down Crowley than dead."

"If you can believe that's what she's doing," Sam muttered.

Dean looked at him for a long moment. "Yeah, well, that's what I think she's doing."

"This ain't helping," Bobby cut in between them. "It's too late to worry about Meg."

"No argument," Dean said, staring at his brother with a stony expression.

Sam looked away and picked up his coffee.

"Thanks for the coffee, Alex," Ellen said into the growing silence. "We need to get back to library," she added to Bobby and Sam as she got to her feet.

For a moment, Sam remained stubbornly where he was, then he gulped down the rest of the coffee and got up, not looking at his brother.

"You're stayin' put for the next few days?" Bobby asked Dean as they both stood.

"Yeah, I'll be around."

"If we find out anything more on weapons against the demons –" Bobby said, looking at him.

"I'll be there," Dean confirmed with a flickered glance at Sam. "How's Adam working out over there?"

"Good," Sam said, shifting his feet. He'd wanted to talk to Dean about their half-brother – the tension over the side-trip to Hell had blown that prospect out of the water. He glanced uncomfortably at Bobby and Ellen who were listening with interest. "Uh … if you're coming over to see Chuck's stuff, we could … um …"

"Yeah," Dean agreed quickly, knowing both what Sam wanted to say and why he wasn't going to say it in front of the others. "Good idea."

"Okay." Sam turned for the hall and walked away, Ellen following him more slowly. Bobby looked at Dean.

"We'll need your input on this," he said tensely, his gaze skittering to Alex and back to the hunter.

"We're looking at what we've got so far, Bobby," Dean told him, ignoring the sceptical glance the hunter'd given Alex. "We'll be over later."

The older man nodded resignedly and turned away and Dean followed him to the door, closing it behind them.

"That was a minefield," Alex said as he came back into the room.

Dean nodded dryly. "Yeah."

He'd known he'd get hell when he got back, had been hoping to have the tablet before anyone had realised he'd gone. But of all of them, it'd only been Alex who hadn't yelled at him for risking his life on an ill-thought-out and impulsive action, and it wasn't because she hadn't seen the longer-reaching consequences of what might have been, he thought. She'd just thought he was capable of handling whatever had come up and she hadn't let whatever she'd felt about the risk of him not coming back override her obvious relief that he had.

He watched her pick up the cups and take them back to the kitchen, wondering at that depth of belief in him.

"Did you find out anything about protection against the nephilim and cambion?" he called out, walking to the table and looking at the piles of books and older, hand-bound manuscripts that were piled at one end.

"A bit," she said, coming back into the room and walking to the table to pick up her notes. "Most of the stuff we already know and use isn't a help, but Katherine gave me some translations of a couple of older texts, from when the Qaddiysh and their children were living openly with people in Canaan."

She sat on the sofa and he dropped next to her, looking over her shoulder at the neatly typed papers she was holding.

"They were regarded as special from the moment they appeared," she said, skimming through the pages. "Guardians, almost, to a few of the tribes living there, sharing knowledge and protecting them from warfare with other peoples."

"What about the Grigori? Where were they at this point?"

"On the other side of the Dead Sea, to the north, mostly." Alex shifted as he settled himself against the high arm of the sofa, propping one leg along the back and drawing her closer. She leaned back against his chest, lifting the pages so that he could read them as well. "They were regarded differently. They meddled – a lot – with the local people and they were feared for their power. I'm not a hundred percent sure of the translations in some of those texts, I need to go over it with Jasper, but the overall feeling was that the Grigori were outcasts and cruel – even their children were cruel."

"Why? What'd they do?" He frowned, trying to recall the conversation the scholars had had about the two factions of fallen angels and what the Qaddiysh had told them in Jordan.

"They would take slaves, mostly kidnapped from the caravans that moved along the trade routes between Egypt and Turkey, but sometimes from the local villages or nomadic tribes as well," she said, flipping through the pages to find the details. "They were practising black magic, I think, because there was a lot of stories that turned into mythology about them using people for sacrifices."

"Here," she said, lifting the page and reading. "_Many people disappeared in the lands between the Dead Sea and the Broken Mountains. They were not seen again, and propitiations were made against the evil sorcerers who lived there. Strange creatures sometimes walked the night, and many times someone who had disappeared would come back, but without their memories or themselves, walking like the dead out of the desert, their eyes blank and blood-filled, unable to speak_."

"Zombies?" Dean wondered aloud. Alex tilted her head back against his shoulder to look up at him.

"I was wondering if those weren't their experiments in making doppelgängers?"

He nodded slowly, the conversation about their Nazi involvement coming back to him. "Did we find the spells or whatever it is to do that?"

"No, the library doesn't have anything on it, and neither does the French chapter," she said. "The Scots and the Cape Verde scholars were still looking."

"Not creepy at all."

"Yeah," she said and he felt the shiver against his chest as it rippled through her. "The Grigori didn't care at all about the people they were living amongst."

Dean nodded. "The Qaddiysh said that they'd run, when Lucifer was defeated and cast down, half his army just took off into the desert."

"They'd already betrayed Heaven, I guess it wasn't such a leap to betray their leader as well," she said, the last word caught in a yawn. "I wonder if it was after that that disobedience became one of Heaven's worst crimes?"

He hadn't considered it but it fit. "Seems likely."

"Anyway," she said, opening her eyes and looking back through the notes. "There are a number of sigils, that were given to the people living near the Grigori, to ward off the nephilim."

"Good," he said, looking over shoulder.

"It's not easy," she warned him, passing the page that detailed the protection. "Oliver says we have some of the ingredients, but only in small amounts, so we need to decide what're the most important things to protect."

Dean read over the ingredients, brows drawing together. "Did Maggie leave a list of what was at the Smithsonian when she looked at it last month?"

"December," Alex corrected him. "And yeah, she did. Some of these things we can definitely get from there, almost all the organic ingredients, but some – I don't know where you'd find them. The library didn't have a record of where their stocks had been obtained from originally either." She looked at the list, eyes narrowing. "And I don't think we can get to the Smithsonian and back before something happens. Unless Cas takes you?"

"He made it pretty clear he was pretty busy right now," Dean said, wondering if the angel would come for a supply run. If it made a difference to them surviving … or not. "How much do we have right now?"

"Enough to ensure that the order can be protected, and perhaps a part of this keep," she said, hiding another yawn behind her hand.

"Is that being done?" he asked her, his arm curving around her waist to draw her closer as he heard the yawn.

"The entrance to the order's building has been, Oliver did it straight away," she said. "Aaron and Felix are arguing with Rufus and Father Emilio about how to protect the keep."

"What's the problem?"

"Felix believes that a single large room should be protected, so that people can go there if we are attacked," Alex told him. "Rufus and Father Emilio think that the walls should be done to make the building inviolate."

"We don't have enough to do all the walls, do we?"

"No," she agreed, closing her eyes. "The sigils' power would hold even if the walls were brought down, but only if every one was marked. And there's not enough to do that. The size has to be fixed."

"I'll talk to them later," he decided, half to himself, aware that the tiredness that categorised this stage of her pregnancy was stealing her away moment by moment. He'd talked to Merrin about it reluctantly, the nurse drawing him aside when he'd gone to see Kim about supplies. She'd told him far more than he'd really wanted to know about the biological and psychological effects of pregnancy, but he had to admit, looking at the last couple of months with the benefit of hindsight and that information, a whole lot had made much more sense.

"Mmm." Alex opened her eyes and lifted the pages. "There's nothing that covers the cambion, though, Dean." She rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand. "I talked to Jasper about it, and their demonic heritage is supposed to be – according to the myth, anyway – completely through the human body they're born with but no devil's trap works on them – he thinks that's because they have a soul – and iron is only a little more irritating to them than it is to us, or any normal human."

"Did he have any ideas about the knife?" he asked her, catching the pages as they slipped out of her hands.

"Uh, um … no," she said, her eyes dropping closed again. "But there was a reference that Davis found in relation to a fight the Qaddiysh had with some demons …"

"What reference, Alex?" Dean prodded gently when she trailed into silence.

"Um … it said something about a metal that could …"

"Could?" he prompted, wondering if this could wait until morning.

"Could what?" she asked him sleepily. His mouth lifted slightly at one corner.

"That was my question."

"Oh … the metal was specially forged," she said. "On the table. I don't know …"

Her breath escaped in a long sigh and he fished the rest of the pages from her lap, reaching over to drop them on the table beside him. He'd look for the reference in a while, he thought, letting his eyes close as he listened to her steady breathing, feeling the tension of the earlier meeting dissipating.

The sigils would not allow a nephilim to pass them, he thought absently, but what they really needed were traps. To hold them. Give them leverage of their own against the fallen and the demons. And they needed something for the cambion, something final. The man he'd fought had been enormously strong and fast, and it'd only been the half-breed's over-confidence in his abilities, and luck holding at the end, that'd saved him.

His hand slid over the growing curve of Alex's belly, resting lightly against it. She was fifteen weeks, according to Kim, the pronounced bulge partly a result of two in there, partly due to the fact that they were a little larger than the doctor had expected. Kim hadn't given a reason for it and he wasn't sure if Alex was okay with that or worried. Something else he wanted to ask her, he thought drowsily.

The flutter against his palm was shocking in its unexpectedness and he lifted his hand instantly, looking down over Alex's shoulder at the smooth stretch of fabric that covered her where his hand had been. Lifting it, he stared at the taut curve, eyes widening as he saw a very faint, fast ripple under the skin. He moved his hand back tentatively and felt the flutter again, barely discernible but definitely there, leaving an echo of sensation in the nerves of his palm.

"Alex?" he whispered, feeling ridiculously as if he might scare them into quiescence if he spoke too loud. "Alex?"

She was out completely, he realised, as not so much as a flicker of an eyelash in response. Had she been feeling that, from the inside? She hadn't mentioned movement. He couldn't take his eyes off her pale, smooth skin. A minute ago, he'd been thinking that she was pregnant. Now, in a way that was still spinning him around, that thought had changed. Now, she was carrying his children. They were in there, growing, but apart from her already. Independent, in a way. No longer passive but actively there. He shook his head at his own confusion of what to think about it.

Whether he was ready or not, he was going to be a father. The enormity of that still hadn't sunk in, not really. He recognised, a little self-deprecatingly, that he might not get it completely until they'd been born. And it would be a little on the late side to figure out how he felt about it then.

He pulled in a deep breath, watching her lift and subside with the movement, and tried to be honest with himself. _Scared_. He was, in a way that had no correlation with his life to this moment. Dying didn't scare him. Facing entities and creatures and power much stronger didn't scare him. Responsibility scared him only when he thought he might fail. And that was the key to this responsibility, wasn't it? Failing the woman he was holding, the children she was bearing? In a myriad of ways that he could hardly even imagine yet. Failing to protect. To be there. To give them what they needed.

_Failing to let them know how much he was going to love them._

He sighed very softly as his past rose around him. There'd been a lot of times when he'd been convinced that his father had no longer loved him. Times that he'd failed to protect his brother. Or had made a bad judgement and put them in danger. Occasional times when his father had seemed incapable of loving anyone or anything, drowning himself in the hunt and his frustrations at the lack of progress in bottles that stank out the rooms and removed every shred of caring from his face, from his eyes.

As an adult, he'd figured that John Winchester hadn't stopped loving his sons. But the memories of the child were still there.

This life, this chaotic and dangerous life they were in now wasn't going to slow down and let him get off. He wasn't going to be allowed to have safety and security, not for himself and not for them. He wasn't sure how the fuck he was going to live with that, he realised. Being afraid for them, all the time, was going to be the hardest gig he would ever have.

It didn't change anything, he thought abruptly. He wasn't going to walk away and he wasn't going to whine about it. And the peace she brought was worth it, worth the doubts and worries that he couldn't escape from when he wasn't right here. He thought better here, more clearly, more focussed on the actual problems, not the side-issues. He felt stronger, he knew, a bizarre contradiction that was somehow caused by the alchemy between them, her belief in him … and his need for her strength, for that unwavering conviction that she saw him as he was, every mistake and every scar, and she loved him for it all.

His breath shuddered out of him and he closed his eyes at the admission. No one had done that, not even his father. There was no expectation from Alex that she wanted anything other than what he already was. Who he already was.

* * *

_**Heaven**_

Raphael scowled as a small candle at the end of the quiet room leapt into flame. The demon was already exceeding his patience with the agreement he'd made with the Grigori, he thought, striding across to it and staring into the flame, not bothering to hide his displeasure as he listened to the demon's speculations and suggestions through the elemental medium.

He straightened as the flame went out, a thin tendril of smoke curling from the wick to the ceiling and turned away. If Castiel had helped Winchester to get into Hell, that changed many things. Michael might be prepared to listen to reason on the advisability of … discussing … matters more frankly with the outspoken and self-willed angel under that aegis.

It would take careful manipulation of both, he thought. The consent of a vessel, once given, could not be lightly removed. But all vessels held some compatibility to others, the bloodlines were few and the population had once been vast. He knew of two others who would be able to do the job. Only one of them was completely loyal to him, but one was precisely enough.

The demon was in a state of fury. He would march his army now. Closing his eyes, Raphael envisaged the whole of the lower plane, stretching his particular frequency through the energy web of the planet, through the atmosphere and the ocean currents, feeling for where they moved, what they controlled. A short delay was needed, and the weather, always unpredictable to the hairless apes, would provide one.

Along the eastern coast of the continent that stretched from north to south, the current shifted slightly, moving out from the land and slowing down. In response, a system that would've travelled further west began to edge eastward, its frigid winds reaching out as the north-flowing warm water left the coast.

The archangel opened his eyes, still seeing the cloud patterns shifting under the changes he'd wrought. It would keep Crowley in Indiana for another week, he thought with a grunt of satisfaction. Long enough.

It did not occur to him that once the angels would have looked along the lines woven and maintained the balance between light and dark. It did not occur to him that once, such meddling in the affairs of humanity would have been punishable by death, and all Heaven bent in efforts to undo what had been done. In this time, there was no one watching the lines and no one to watch and report on changes that happened daily, by the minute. Everything was free-falling. He took it for granted that nothing he'd done had left even the most ghostly and intangible of prints that could lead back to him. As long as the man continued to change the lines, anything could be accomplished at any time.

* * *

_**Camp Atterbury, Indiana**_

Crowley scowled at the dark line on the northern horizon that was approaching the base rapidly. Convenient that a blizzard had arrived to underline Raphael's insistence that he have more time, he thought furiously. Convenient that it hadn't been driven here, according to Baeder and Dietrich, but seemed natural enough, an unforeseen shift in the Gulf Stream to the east and the system had been able to move on top of them.

_Convenient for Heaven_.

He dragged the collar of his coat higher and spun on his heel, heading back indoors. The army was ready – as ready as they would ever be, he amended to himself sourly. The only thing in their favour was the abilities of the cambion. Had he realised that they were so powerful, he'd have rethought his plan of attack but of course Draxler had only pointed it out that morning. He'd seen the look of shock on Dietrich's face as well, and had seen the almost-invisible look of satisfaction in the half-breed's eyes as he'd turned away after dropping his bombshell.

It didn't matter, not in the long run. They had the list of names. They had almost two thousand men and women, armed and reasonably well drilled in what they would be doing. They had ordnance coming out of their backsides, he thought, looking around the icy, windswept base from the comfort of his office, the glass of whiskey in his hand. He would get the tablet and the Colt back and the Winchesters would be out of the picture permanently and plans would once again proceed as desired.

_And the lines would stop changing_.

The Throne had told him something of the lines of destiny and the entities that spun and wove and cut, but not much. He didn't have the time he needed to just sit and absorb all the information he knew was held within it. What he did know was that what was happening right now, had never happened before, had been considered completely impossible.

The bloodlines of the compatible seraphim who had fallen with their Grace intact were limited to three lines. Araquiel. Azazel. Amaros. Only those descended from those three lines could produce vessels suitable for the Eighth Choir. And of those three, only two were able to produce vessels for Michael and Lucifer. Originally, as he'd come to understand it, it was only vessels that had been desired. Then someone in Heaven had discovered that one of the bloodlines could also be manipulated to another end. The breaking of the seals on the Cage in the ninth level. Specifically, the breaking of the first seal and the last one. A lot of careful manipulation – of Heaven and on the earthly plane, and in Hell – had been required to get exactly what was needed. And they had not seen the side-effect, the great, glaring elephant-in-the-room side-effect that was bringing them undone now.

"The storm will last only a couple of days," Baeder said from the doorway. Crowley glanced at him and nodded.

"It won't matter," he told the fallen angel. "Just a couple of days to eat, drink and be merry and then we'll be on the road."

Baeder's expression, at least on the side of his face that could hold expression, was stiff and disapproving, Crowley saw with an inward flicker of contentment.

"Lighten up, man," he told him with a cheeriness that grated further. "We'll have the prophet and the tablet, and the prophet will be able to give us the location of the angel tablet, and it'll all be roses, you'll see." He turned to the sideboard and poured a double into a crystal glass, picking it up and handing it to Baeder. "Have a drink, you'll feel better."

Baeder stared at him for a moment, then threw back the whiskey in a single gulp. Crowley winced.

"Once the main passes across the mountains have cleared, how long till your mates get over here?"

"Here or Boston?" Baeder asked coldly.

"Boston," Crowley clarified, resisting the urge to put a fist into his face.

"A few weeks," Baeder confirmed. "They will want the existing populations left intact, but we will need more of your demons to round up the creatures that have been turned."

"Yeah, Dietrich told me," Crowley said with an indifferent shrug. "Well, we'll see how we're getting on with the angel tablet before we commit ourselves to anything major."

The implicit rebuke in the statement again made the angel stiffen and Crowley turned away, hiding his amusement. He would be running this show and it would be better if the Grigori didn't persist in a delusion of partnership. He still needed to figure out a better answer for the cambion though.

* * *

Baeder stood rigidly in front of the window, staring at the snowflakes that blew almost horizontally across the empty parade ground, his hands clenched behind his back.

From the armchair several feet away, Dietrich watched him thoughtfully. The angel was almost out of control, he thought. Certainly ready to rip the King of Hell into small, unrecognisable pieces given the slightest opportunity.

"The gun will kill him," Baeder said, the words bitten out.

"Yes," Dietrich agreed. "But he will not allow it out of his sight, and you know that. The cambion can take him easily when the time comes."

"I want to see him surprised, Dietrich," Baeder said, turning slowly to face him. "And I want to see him suffering."

"I'm sure that can be arranged." Dietrich shrugged indifferently. "Eric, you need to rest. This is a good time –"

"Do not talk to me of rest," the fallen snapped. "I will rest when we have succeeded. Not before."

"You will burn out before then," Dietrich said mildly. He gestured to the nephilim who were gathered at the end of the room. "Ariana is willing. Shed some of your fury so that you are thinking clearly when we leave."

Baeder stared at him. "My thoughts have never been as clear as they are now, Dietrich. They are razor blades of clarity."

Dietrich exhaled softly as he watched him stalk out of the room. It was like watching the countdown to a bomb, he thought. The only question was if Eric would last the distance or blow himself up before they got to the end of the next task. He had a strong feeling that his brother would hang on long enough.

* * *

_**Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania**_

In the shelter of the dark wood, the snow fell almost straight, huge, fluffy flakes that clung to the windshield and clotted and froze together, the wipers flipping over them. Peter slowed again, swearing under his breath as Penemue wound down the window and half-crawled out to knock them off the freezing glass.

"We'll have to stop," Elena said, hunched in the seat between the _Irin_ and Peter and staring out at the darkening landscape.

Peter nodded grimly, his mouth thinning as the car idled forward and the fall grew thicker, covering the road in front of him.

The substation was almost invisible by the time they'd reached it. Shamsiel reached forward and gripped Peter's shoulder as they drove slowly past it, seeing the man-made geometry in the half-mantled shape between the thick trees.

"There."

Pulling over, they struggled through the deepening snow, loaded with the gear bags, to the iron door set in the front of the small building. Peter's hands stiffened in the cold as he worked the picks to free the lock. A single shot would have been quicker, Baraquiel thought, looking around the forest that surrounded them, but impossible to repair if they needed to lock anyone – or thing – out.

Inside, a narrow platform led to a set of brick steps that followed the wall down. Peter closed and locked the door behind them, and followed the Qaddiysh and Elena's flashlight down.

At the bottom of the stairs, Elena moved into the large, square room. On one wall, a number of boxes and boards showed the power coming in and going out, festooned with cobwebs and dark. On the far side, a broken pipe dripped water with a steady, surprisingly annoying plink into a shallow puddle below but the rest of the room was dry.

Peter dropped his bag to the ground, pulling out the small gas lantern and canister and lighting it and they set up a simple camp, moving without speaking, each well practised in their tasks.

"What now?" Shamsiel asked, looking at them as soup heated on the tiny stove.

Penemue looked over at the almost still pool in the corner of the room. "We should try to see what is going on."

Sighing, Shamsiel uncrossed his legs and got up, walking to the pool. Elena and Peter turned to watch him beside it, his hand moving a couple of inches about the surface as his eyes closed and he murmured something in a soft, sing-song language.

"What's he doing?" Elena asked, looking back at Penemue.

The Irin smiled a little quizzically. "You are legacies of the Order, are you not?"

Her look of surprise, and Peter's flash of a grin stopped him.

"No, we are hunters," Peter said, glancing sideways at Elena. "Not scholars."

Penemue's brow rose. "I did not realise there was a difference?"

Elena laughed. "A huge difference, _mon ami_," she said, lowering her voice a little. "My family, for many, many generations, have been sworn to the _Chambre d'ombres_, that is our legacy, if you like."

Beside her, Peter nodded. "Mine also, were sworn as the weapons of the Church, for many hundreds of years now."

"But you are both –"

"Versed in lore?" Peter cut in with a smile.

"Yes, we know what we hunt, we know what we protect," Elena added, lifting a shoulder in a slight shrug. "But we do not study the patterns, Penemue – as I believe you do – you and your brothers?" She looked at Baraquiel, sitting by the vehicle, the black metal knife across his knees as he sharpened the edge smoothly.

Penemue nodded slowly. "We were asked to fall, by our Father. To protect and teach humanity. We have also been scholars and soldiers."

"Why did you fall?" Elena asked him curiously. "It must be hard, to be apart from Heaven, from your kin?"

"It was a great honour, to be chosen" Penemue answered, his gaze turning to Shamsiel. "And a great adventure, at the time. And I –" he cut himself off, shaking his head. "There was much we could learn from each other, I thought."

Peter watched the man's face carefully. "_And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose._"

The Watcher looked at him and smiled, his expression a little rueful. "Yes, and there was that as well."

"You fell in love?" Elena looked at him. Penemue made a vague gesture.

"Does it not come to all, eventually?"

"Penemue!" Shamsiel's voice was a hiss across the room.

Penemue and Baraquiel got up, and Elena and Peter glanced at each other, rising after them. They walked to Shamsiel, crouching around him and looking into the pool.

On the surface, they saw a thickly covered snowscape, mounds and drifts rising in dunes, a wood to the left mantled in snow. Two children stood in the centre, holding hands, their free arms lifted and pointing ahead of them. Elena held her breath as she watched the snow melt and disappear in front of the children, steam billowing as the road on which they stood was revealed, a shining black ribbon curving between the snow banks. The children lowered their arms and walked forward, and behind them a vehicle drove over the newly cleared surface, broad tyres flicking moisture backwards. It was an open Army vehicle, a wide wheelbase and boxy shape identifying it easily as a HMMVV similar to their own. In it, three men and two women sat, warmly dressed, all carrying automatic weapons.

"Ashriel," Baraquiel breathed from beside her, staring intently at the images. "And Mossaque."

Penemue nodded. "Look at the lie of the shadows, they are heading west."

Behind the vehicle, a long line of trucks followed, men and women walking to either side, dressed uniformly in mottled grey and brown clothing, rifles slung over their shoulders, their faces impassive, their eyes black, from corner to corner.

"The demon's army is marching," Shamsiel said, his face screwing up as he forced his concentration on the scene shown in the water tighter. The army marched along the road, filling it from side to side, and they kept watching, the line showing no end.

On the side of the road, the melted snow revealed a green and white sign, battered and crumpled. All of them could read it. St Louis, one hundred and fifty miles.

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Kansas**_

Sam watched as Marla sat at the laptop, her fingers flying over the keys. To her left, the pile of the scratched and scrawled notes Chuck had been producing for the last few hours sat, red ink glaring out from the black handwriting. On the other side of the table, Alex was bent over the latest notes, reading through them, her brows drawn tightly together as she deciphered the atrocious handwriting and made corrections. He had a pile of her corrected notes in front of him, checking that what she'd managed to pull out of the barely legible solid blocks of text was meaningful.

He'd been surprised when she'd turned up with Dean four hours ago, but grateful when it appeared that she could actually read most of the notes.

"_Two years working together in Chitaqua," she'd told him with a wry smile, dropping her coat and settling herself at the table. "But I'll need someone to check for the words that I'm not likely to know," she'd added, skimming over the first page_.

He'd nodded and their little prophet production line had worked smoothly since.

The printer on the other side of the room was printing the typed versions. Dean was sitting down in the situation room with Jerome and Father Emilio and Father McConnaughey, going through those. Bobby, Ellen, Rufus and Maurice would be over later, when they had more of an idea of what they had here.

So far, he thought, reading through the page in front of him, it was mainly lists. The hierarchies of Hell. Demon names and their respective responsibilities in the accursed plane. Briefly sketched histories of the major events. Jerome was grabbing those, he knew, and handing them to Aaron and Mitch to be entered into the order's histories.

"Sam," Alex said, staring at the page in front of her. "This looks like it's detailing protection spells."

"Dean!" Sam turned and called down to the other room, getting up and walking around the table to lean over her shoulder.

The spidery hand had been clarified where the words had become too illegible, Alex's neat printing in the red pen clear and filling in the gaps. She was right, he thought, looking at the complex diagrams interspersed with the text. He skimmed down the page.

Dean walked to the table. "What?"

"Protection," Sam said shortly. Walking behind his brother and Alex, Dean leaned on the table and started to read the pages. He looked over at Sam.

"I can get the trench-diggers from Franklin, but I got no clue about artefacts with psychic residue," he said, shaking his head.

"A mile west of Hays, there was a town called Rome. It was the original settling point for that area," Alex said, looking up at him. "In 1867, a cholera epidemic wiped out most of that town's residents and the rest relocated to Hays. Six months later, a group of settlers stopped there and they were murdered, at least a hundred and forty men, women and children. They were camping near the church. If you can find any of the building's foundations, or brick or stone from there, it will be enough."

Dean blinked at her. "How the hell do you know that?"

"The history part was a school project," she said, waving a hand dismissively. "But one of the projects Chuck was working on at Chitaqua was a correlation between mass death events and the gates to other planes … well, specifically to Hell. He was talking to Cas about it, and I was helping him research the larger events."

He looked at his brother. "Hays is about a hundred miles from here –"

Sam nodded, following the thought easily. "Vince can take the susvee, Jack, Chris and Lee," he said, turning to head back to the situation room and the radio. "Alex, did Chuck have the co-ordinates for that town in his files?"

"Yeah, he had them on the laptop. Mitch can get them," she said, getting to her feet.

Dean put his hand on her shoulder, and looked at her. "Stay here, keep reading, I'll tell Mitch."

Sam glanced back at them, slowing as he watched her sit down, his brother lean forward, speaking quietly to her. He was too far to hear what Dean said, but he saw something between them, something potent and intimate as Dean brushed his lips lightly over hers. The gesture was uncharacteristically tender and Sam turned away, feeling uncomfortably as if he'd intruded on something private, tinged with surprise at seeing it all. He walked to the radio, the image playing in his mind.

He heard Dean come down the steps a few minutes later, as Anson nodded that the transmission had gone through, and looked at the table where the priests were reading the typed notes.

"We've got stronger wards for the buildings, and stronger traps," Dean said without preamble, sitting down beside Father Emilio. Sam walked over to them, standing next to Father McConnaughey. "But there's still nothing on the cambion."

"How long can we have Alex for?" Sam asked his brother. Dean shrugged.

"She left the keep business to Maria and Fred, she can be here as long as Chuck keeps churning it out."

"Good." He looked down at Dean, another spurt of surprise hitting him as he realised that Dean actually looked relaxed, half-sprawled in the chair and questioning the two priests on their knowledge of the demon offspring. When had that happened?

"Sam, there's more," Alex called, and he turned to look up the stairs at her, nodding.

"This is talking about trapping souls – it doesn't relate specifically to demons, but it might have a bearing on the cambion, or even the nephilim," she said, handing the sheets to him. "It's possible Father McConnaughey might know something of this – he said something about the souls of the half-breeds give them their power, but are also their weakness?"

"Thanks," Sam said, gathering up the papers and taking them back down the stairs, sitting down at the situation table.

The men crowded around the corner of the table, reading the notes. Father McConnaughey looked up and shook his head.

"Emilio, we did know about this," he said, scowling. "The node stones."

"What node stones?" Sam looked at him.

"Jerome, are there node stones – any kind – here in with the artefacts?"

Jerome looked around from the computer screens and nodded. "We have a couple. Why?"

"There was a Romani story, centuries ago. And spells, I think. To trap the soul – and the mind – in a stone found in the nodes of the leys," he said shortly, getting up. "Would Oliver know where they are?"

Jerome nodded again. "They were in the apothecary store-rooms."

"Leys … ley lines?" Sam asked, looking at Father Emilio. The Jesuit rubbed a hand over his face.

"It was just a myth, but the Church had them too," he confirmed. "They're special crystals, with a lattice that does not occur frequently in nature. There was a spell, to draw any soul that crossed the stone into it."

"So we can trap the cambion that way?" Dean asked tightly. "Or a nephilim?"

Father Emilio shrugged. "If we have the stones and we can spell them correctly, yes."

"Let's do it," he said, getting up. "Sam, you got this?"

Sam nodded. "Where are you going?"

"I need to see Jackson and Riley about protecting our stores," he said, glancing up at the library table. "Alex was going to come as well, but she's probably better off here."

He looked back at his brother and saw the tacit request in his face. He nodded. "What did you have in mind?"

"If we can spare the stock, we'll use the stronger wards right over everything there," Dean said, pulling his jacket from the back of the chair and dragging it on. "Otherwise, we'll try and get as much hidden in the mine as we can." He turned for the stairs. "I'll be back in a couple of hours."

* * *

_**Lightning Oak Keep, Kansas**_

Ellen rubbed the fogged-over thickened glass of the window and stared outside, the gathering dusk hiding the woods to the south, the first few stars showing in the indigo sky.

"Franklin has two hundred, ready to be deployed," Rufus said, stretching back in the chair. "Not counting keep guards."

"Two hundred isn't going far," Bobby said tiredly, getting up to put a couple more logs on the bright fire in the hearth. "Chuck's vision showed a thousand, at least, probably more."

"We don't need as many numbers for defence as they need for attack," Rufus reminded him. "And now, we can take them out with the outer defences, especially any bigger weapons they might bring with them."

The populations of all five keeps had been working on the outer defences since Chuck had had the first vision, Liev managing siting and construction of the small forts that ringed the town in a mile radius from the protected holds. Each fort had Franklin's long-range artillery installed, dual targeting and defended with ten-foot thick stone and steel-reinforced walls. Under the foundations, deep tunnels had been dug to allow for whatever Crowley's army was bringing with them.

The army – on foot – could come from any direction. But the roads leading into Lebanon, except for the US-36 from the west, and the US-281 from the north, were mined, ten miles out from the town. Any vehicles would have to stay outside that range, and any weapons they were going to bring with them would have be humped across country by hand. It would, they hoped, reduce the possible damage that could be done to the keep walls and buildings. Each fort would have eyes on the roads. Each fort was in range of the two open roads with its guns. Each fort would be manned by twenty-five of Franklin's recruits, all of whom had done nothing but drill and practice with the armament since construction had begun.

"What about everyone else?" Ellen asked, turning back to them and drawing the soft knitted coat more closely around her. "And Michigan?"

Bobby moved over on the armchair as she came to sit beside him. "We've got no reason to think Michigan's in danger," he said, knowing she was worried. "And Boze called in yesterday, said that another big fall dumped more on them, couldn't even see the roads anymore. Nothing'll get through there until the thaw."

"Everyone is going to be on defence here, Ellen," Rufus added. "Those who can't fight will be making sure that the wounded are taken care of and there's enough food for those coming off the walls."

"Rufus, we have two hundred women here who are in their fourth month – that's just here, in the main keep there's more than five hundred –"

"Yeah, including you," Bobby growled at her. "Don't you think we've thought of this?"

It'd been the biggest shock of his life, when she'd come out of Kim's office and told him he was going to be a father. He hadn't known what to say, what to feel. And the man he would've gone to talk to about it had been under his own strain. Rufus had told him a little of his conversation with Dean. Ellen was near the high-risk end of the spectrum and neither had wanted to add their concerns to whatever the de facto leader was going through.

"There's a reason Liev built the tunnels, Ellen," Rufus said firmly. "If we can't hold them at the perimeter, then everyone who can't fight will be evacuated into the tunnels."

"We won't lose 'em," Bobby said, his arm curving around her hips. "The demons won't be able to cross the walls, no matter how many pieces they're in. Those wards are built into them, into the concrete and into the stone and the fill is all salt and pure iron. And we already know that if the cambion try to get in, they'll be after Chuck and the tablet, first and foremost."

"There's nothing to stop them from destroying us when they don't find him here," she said astringently.

"Just us," Rufus agreed readily. "We don't die so easy."

She looked away, her hand unconsciously creeping up from her lap to curl around her stomach. Twins, Kim had told her, the worry in her eyes held back but still there. She hadn't realised Bobby'd still be shooting live rounds. Hadn't really thought of herself as being fertile either, and probably, she thought, if things had been normal, she wouldn't have quickened, but things were such a long way from being normal that she no longer even remembered what normal looked like.

She'd told Jo a few days ago, glad for once that she couldn't see her daughter's face. She'd caught a faint edge to her voice, for a moment, as Jo realised that she wouldn't have her mother to help her through this, but that had vanished when they'd talked about the risk factor and the things that Ellen had finally allowed were worrying her. _Father of the Bride II_, Jo had jokingly said to her, Ellen mystified over the reference until she'd explained. She and Ty were having three, according to Bernice, Ray and Meredith, and they'd be the same age as their two aunts. It wasn't much of a joke, just the best her daughter could come up with given the circumstances and it made her smile a little now. At least Bill's genes would be carried forward. The thought brought a pang of sadness and she felt Bobby's arm close around her a little more firmly. Damned man could sense her feelings better than her daughter could.

"Besides," Rufus was saying and she looked at him, blinking against the pricking behind her eyes and forcing herself to concentrate on him again.

"We made it this far, Ellen," he said, draining his glass. "We can make it to the end zone."

Bobby tapped the plans in front of him. "This what we're taking to Dean tomorrow?"

"All of it, yeah," Rufus confirmed. "He's sent Vince and some of the kids down to Hays, grab that crap that's going to beef up the walls."

"Did they get back to you on the traps for the nephilim and the cambion?" Ellen asked.

"They've got two stones, Dean said," Bobby told her, turning to look into her face. "They'll use one at the keep and one at the safehold, and I want you at the keep when we get first warning."

She shook her head. "No, I'm staying here."

"No," he countered tightly. "You're not. Keep's got the best and strongest protection we can find. Chuck's translating the crap out of that stone but even with the sigils and the spells, without the ingredients we can't provide the same level of safety here. So … for my peace of mind, you'll be over there."

In his voice there was an entreaty and she heard it. _Don't fight me on this. Don't make me worry more'n I already am. Stay safe so's I got something to fight for_. They'd been over this twice already. This was her home and she wanted to be here, by his side. She'd let Bill go off and he hadn't come back. She wasn't sure she'd cope too well if that happened again. But for him, it was the same. He'd be too worried about her, about the family that he wanted more than he could say, if she was here.

Rufus cleared his throat. "Dean's already figured the roster for who's where once the sirens go, Ellen," he said casually. "You're going to be there, so if you want to fight with him about it …" he let the rest of the sentence trail off.

Ellen's lips pursed slightly. "Don't think I wouldn't if there weren't other considerations, Turner," she said shortly.

"Ah, would never think you'd take an order lyin' down, Ellen," he said with a crooked smile.

She glared at him but it was habit only. She'd seen Dean two days ago at the keep, and her winter clothing had hidden her news effectively until she'd taken off her coat. He'd seen the curving bump immediately, and had been genuinely happy for her and Bobby. She'd thought it might've added to his worries, but for the first time, she thought he'd been … alright. Better than alright, he'd been good. Confident and working through every problem smoothly, more relaxed than she'd ever seen him, that one-sided smile widening, the wary cynicism that had been shadowing his eyes ever since she'd met him … gone. Watching him, she'd seen him laugh with Ben, shrug off the minor difficulties that Mel and Nate had brought along to the meeting, figure solutions and when she'd come again and asked Bobby about it, he'd agreed straight away. He thought it was the impending prospect of being a father, but she remembered the way he'd been, before Lisa had died, and she didn't see it. He looked like a man who'd finally figured out his place in life, she thought. Finally found where he fit.

* * *

_**Ghost Valley Farm, Kansas**_

The three men walked across the bare fields to the woodland boundary, looking across the gently rolling hills as the sun inched higher above the horizon and the world turned from silver to gold.

"You think they'll come after the farms?" Riley looked at the distant buildings, shining white in the early morning light. "Come after us?"

"No," Dean said, shaking his head. "They might if they see resistance here, but if nothing's moving, they'll probably just leave them. They don't know that they won't be able to get in, even if they come." He looked to the left of the buildings and gestured to the squat, square tower sitting on a slightly higher hilltop a mile to the south. "And they'll be distracted," he added. "Franklin's got some heavy artillery on all the forts. They'll engage and cover the buildings for as long as they can. The ammo is designed to take the meatsuits down, bind the demons inside them. You keep low, and use the tunnels, worst case, and you'll come out okay."

"What about our stores? We can forget the fucking wheat if there's an army trampling across the fields, but we've got seed in those silos." Jackson glowered at the silos near the buildings as if they were personally responsible for their vulnerability.

"I don't think they'll hit the silos or the barns," Dean said, following his gaze. "But we're not taking a chance with it. There'll be people coming for the next four days to move the seed stores to the basements and the tunnels. Leave whatever you think can be left, but get what we need for the future under cover."

The older man nodded sourly. "First really good year we've had in the last three and we get invaded," he grumbled.

"So long as we come out of it vertical, we can catch up," Riley said mollifyingly. "What about these goddesses, Dean. Another round by them, and we're either going to have to expand the holdings or figure on some sort of protection against the monsters, like we've got against the demons."

"Michel said he got a shot of the boat off the east coast, two weeks ago," Dean told him. "If they can find a vehicle, one that'll move in the snow, we might see the Watchers in the next couple of weeks. If they're slogging it out on foot, it'll be longer."

"Can we get rid of them, for good I mean?" the lanky farmer asked, tucking his gloved hands into his pockets.

Dean snorted. "The box is a transdimensional doorway, Riley," he said disparagingly. "Now you know as much about it as I do."

"Used to love sci-fi as a kid," Riley grinned at him. "I'll take your word for it."

Dean laughed, turning to scan the fields for the boy. He saw Ben near the edge of the woods, whistling and waving as he turned toward them.

"Let me know if there's anything you need."

"Yeah, we'll do that," Jackson grunted. He looked at the windswept sky mistrustfully. "Should be getting a thaw now."

Dean walked beside him, hearing the crunch underfoot. "Not unusual for a long winter, though?"

"No, but this is the third one like this we've had in a row."

The words triggered a memory of a memory in Dean's mind and he hunched deeper into his coat, trying to drag it out. Like most of the memories that weren't related directly to family, a hunt or the situation at hand, it refused to come and be looked at, fading away to nothing as he saw Ben's face.

"What?"

Ben frowned a little, looking up at Jackson. "No one's hunting in the woods this morning, are they?"

Jackson shook his head. "No, son, why?"

"I thought I saw someone in there."

Dean felt himself tense slightly. "Without looking over there, can you describe where?"

"Two hundred yards from the fenceline and three hundred from the corner post, behind that oak that grew bigger than the rest," Ben said quickly.

"Good, okay," Dean said, catching his lower lip between his teeth as he mentally reviewed what he was carrying with him today. "You go inside with Jackson and Riley," he told the boy, glancing sideways at the farmers. "All completely natural, nothing going on, right?"

"Right," Ben said quickly.

Riley lifted his face to catch the sun. "Not going in on your own," he said casually.

Dean grinned humourlessly. "Yeah, I've done this a few times, Riley. You keep the people here safe."

* * *

He kept to the shadows, and the damp ground, in between the trees where the snow had fallen but didn't lay on the ground, the rich humus muffling his footsteps, the mottled grey, brown and white jacket he wore hiding his outline. The medallion lay warm against his chest and his mind was empty and cold.

Dean saw the man, lying beneath the low, sweeping branches of the conifer, binoculars pressed to his face, and stopped. He pressed his shoulder to the rough tree trunk beside him, his gaze moving over the prone figure, over the area surrounding him slowly and cautiously, watching and waiting for any sign of a partner. After ten minutes, neither of them had moved an inch and he was reasonably sure the man was alone – at least in this part of the wood. He had the feeling that there were others, on the outskirts of the land they'd pushed into, watching as this one was.

The barrel of the automatic flicked up and the shot rang out in the silent forest, followed by a shrill scream of pain. He straightened up, stepping out from the tree and walking unhurriedly to the man, who rolling on the ground, one arm limp, the other wrapped over his chest, hand clutching at his shoulder as blood leaked out between his fingers, the glasses dropped and forgotten beside him.

"Hey," Dean said brightly, stopping beside him.

The man's mouth opened wide, his eyes bulging slightly as he attempted to force a way out, but nothing happened. Dean nodded understandingly.

"Binding sigil, on the bullet," he explained, dropping to one knee beside him and driving his thumb close by the wound, eliciting another shrill and breathless shriek. "We've been fooling around with a few rounds," he continued conversationally, glancing at the wound. "These are modified hollow-points. Makes sure they stay in."

The man's eyes were a flat black, corner to corner. "You gonna kill me? Do it then!"

The small lift of one side of Dean's mouth didn't really resemble a smile. "Kill you? Hell, no," he said. "Gotta ask some questions, first."

"You're wasting your breath, Winchester," the demon spat at him. "I'll take whatever you've got over Crowley any day."

"Well, we'll see how you feel about that," Dean said in a mild tone, his fingers digging into the shoulder and lifting the man from the ground as he straightened up. "I got some free time."

"I ain't tellin' you nothin'," he snarled, stumbling forward as the wire caught at his ankles, forcing him into a shuffling trot.

"Yeah, well, you probably think that you've got the whole pain thing down, after Hell," Dean told him, pushing a little harder. "But the thing about flesh and blood is the variety. There're a helluva lot of ways to take it to the limit up here in the real world."

He drew out the knife from its sheath behind his hip. The demon stared at it, following the movement as Dean turned the blade to look along the edge.

"You know what this is?"

"Yeah."

"How many more hiding out here?" Dean asked, pushing him casually back against the tree.

"Go ahead, do what you want!"

The tip slid easily in through the muscle and sinews between shoulder joint and collar bone and the top of the rib cage and Dean turned the blade slowly. The demon's scream sent a flock of birds flapping into the sky at the other end of the woods, and dissipated into a series of breathless moans as the blade withdrew.

"How many?"

"Fuck you!"

"Not my type," he quipped, slicing across the demon's abdomen, the jacket and clothing beneath fluttering, the edges turning red as the curving tip split skin and fat slowly. Watching the face, Dean saw a gradual recognition dawning in the eyes, and he nodded encouragingly.

"You know what I did in Hell?" he asked it, pushing a little deeper as he made a second cut below the first.

"Alastair's pet!"

Dean's mouth stretched out in a humourless smile, his eyes arctic. "How many?"

The meatsuit was shuddering deeply, the nervous system dealing with too many reports of injury and the demon couldn't suck in enough air to answer. Dean dropped a little, slicing through the hamstring at the back of the knee, the demon sagging suddenly as the leg gave way, a burst of reddened spittle exploding from its mouth with the high-pitched squeal.

"I can leave you here tonight," Dean said, straightening up. "Wolves have been around, they won't care if you're still in there when they start to chow down."

"Four!" it shrieked at him, dropping to the ground. "There're four others."

"Where?"

"Five mile radius around the town," it gasped, lifting its hand as a bloody froth dribbled from the corner of its mouth.

"What'd you tell Crowley?" Dean asked, his gaze moving from the demon to scan the area.

"Nothing, just a grunt, wasn't in contact!"

"Really?" He stepped back and kicked at the small, bronze goblet half-hidden in the undergrowth. "Why've you got a squawk-box?"

The demon rolled its eyes, tipping its head back against the tree trunk. "You'll kill me? If I tell you?"

"Quick as can be," Dean agreed, the blade catching the strengthening light through the thin branches as he dropped to a crouch.

"Everything."

"Everything?"

"The forts, the mines, the farms, the guns, the training," the demon said, hawking a throatful of blood and spitting it out. "Been here a month."

"Since we hit the Grigori?"

"Yeah, Crowley knows everything you've done," the demon agreed. It lifted its head and looked at him. "So … kill me."

The knife was reversed and in the air before the last word, burying itself to the hilt in the demon's chest. Red-gold light boiled in the vessel, spilling out through the cuts and tears, flooding from mouth, eyes and nose. It died away and Dean stood up, leaning over to brace his hand against the shoulder and drag the knife clear. He wiped the blade absently on the demon's jacket and slid it back into the sheath.

_Everything_. It wouldn't change the plan, he thought, looking around the clearing. They could sweep and pick up the others and put some booby traps in along the woods that marked the boundaries of every keep and the farms.

It wouldn't change a thing. He walked back through the trees, feeling the sunlight dappled and patterning his back. There was nothing Crowley had learned that would enable him to alter his plan of attack, and their defences were stronger now, with the blood sigils from the tablet.

He felt the back of his neck prickle and pushed the feeling of unease aside. Chuck was wrong. The visions were wrong. He and Sam would be here and they'd take whoever the demon and the fallen tried to send in and they'd be here, protecting the population and keeping them safe.

_What the prophet has written can't be unwritten. As he has seen it, so it shall come to pass._

The angel's word echoed ominously in his head and his expression flattened out to a dark scowl. _Well, this would be the exception that proved the rule_, he thought mulishly. He'd just found what he needed, found what he'd been searching for, and he wasn't going to risk that, wasn't going to take a chance with it. He'd be here and they would have to fucking well come through him.


	13. Chapter 13 As It Has Been Foretold

**Chapter 13 As It Has Been Foretold**

* * *

_**West Keep, Kansas**_

Looking down at the plans spread over the long table, Maurice wondered if their defences would be enough. The gun towers and mines were one thing, he thought, but the actual protection for the population was going to be entirely different.

"Frank, what artillery do we have on the towers?" he asked the grizzled soldier, looking across the table.

"We picked up fifteen Howies," Franklin said, leaning across to the tap the map. "We got 'em mounted on every tower and every fort. Along with that, we got two mortars per tower."

"And they're firing what?" Ellen looked across from the desk.

"Modified shells," Franklin answered shortly.

His apprentice, Tony, nodded enthusiastically. "We smelted the pig iron with salt and cast shrapnel, every piece is engraved with that symbol that'll bind whatever it hits into its meatsuit."

Elias looked over at him, one brow lifted. "Every piece? What's the load?"

"They're the size of nickels," Franklin said with a cold grin. "But not round. They'll scatter effectively."

"Once the demon is bound, anything that can destroy the mobility of the meatsuit will keep them out of the action," Dean said, raising his voice a little so that everyone could hear him. "That's not the problem," he added, looking over the map. "Crowley knows where our guns are, and where the mines have been laid."

"We've added a strip to each of the woods surrounding the keeps," Franklin told him. "If they avoid the roads and fields, they'll still get hit and those were all repacked as well."

"Chuck wrote that the army spread around the keeps," Father Emilio said. "He didn't give an estimate and it's impossible to know how many survivors the demon could have possibly found, but in the subsequent descriptions of the way the surrounding countryside was trampled, I believe we're probably facing more than a thousand."

"We got two hundred pretty well trained spread over the five keeps here," Franklin pointed out tersely to the priest. "And another five hundred per keep who're under their orders. This is going to be siege, not an assault, and the forts'll keep 'em off the farmlands we can't protect in person."

Father Emilio nodded, his expression apologetic. "I understand that, Franklin, I'm more concerned about what they're coming to here find."

"The tablet, gun and Chuck are tucked away in the order safehold," Dean said, frowning at him. "That's protected against the nephilim and the safe is in the stone trap."

"If they decide they want leverage against you, Dean, who will they attempt to take to force you into giving up the tablet? Not Chuck." The Jesuit looked expressionlessly at him and he looked back at the map.

"Sam'll be with Chuck," Dean replied tightly. "Alex, Ben and Ellen'll be here, in the medical offices." He looked back at Father Emilio. "There's protection against the nephilim on the floor and walls and door and we set the second stone in the doorway."

Rufus watched the priest shrug, apparently somewhat satisfied. "We've got a couple of weeks before they can move, and that's the earliest prediction based on the GOES information," he said, clearing his throat as he looked at Dean. "Just 'cause they know some of what we got, doesn't mean they'll get through it any easier."

Dean straightened up, his face cold as he stared at the preparations.

"Now, that's defence," Franklin said, turning to Mitch. "We also got communications up."

Looking around at the hard-faced men and women who filled the room and were all staring at him, Mitch swallowed.

"Uh, yeah," he started, gesturing to the woman standing a little behind him. "This is Deidre, and we've, uh, been rerouting the phone lines and using the older style PABX key stations. Because most of the line is still intact, we've connected all five keeps, although not everyone has a private line. We're trying to get a routed plan for communications with Michigan but that's gonna take longer."

"We got phones?" Bobby asked, brows shooting up beneath the brim of his cap. "Since when?"

"Since about three hours ago," Deirdre told him, her expression impatient . "We ran the first successful tests out to Crows Nest with an exchange transfer to Ghost Valley."

She was in her late-forties, small and bone-thin, dark hair cut very short and bright blue eyes. "We've also had a successful non-recorded dry run on the digital video cameras set up at the outer defences."

"What we need is personnel," Mitch continued, looking from Rufus to Dean. "Strategically, if we can keep comms open no matter what's going on, we're in a better position to change tactics on the fly."

Franklin nodded. "Anson's already training three more to take six-hour shifts here, but we'll need at least those hunters and trainees who are going to be seconded to the defence lines as well. Twelve altogether for all the stations."

Dean shrugged, glancing at Rufus and Bobby. "No problem, grab who you want."

The older hunters nodded. "What are the lines available?" Bobby asked.

"There're open sockets in the offices of every keep, for strict use by the leaders of the keeps. Here, we've got four open sockets – this office," he paused as heads turned expectantly to the desk, looking for a handset. It sat discreetly next to the lamp, looking so ordinary that no one had realised they hadn't had seen one for the last three and a half years. "We installed a line in Kim's office for medical emergencies and there's one in your quarters," Mitch said, looking at Dean, then turning to Rufus. "And yours. Just in case anyone needs to get hold of you fast."

"What about the exchange and monitors?" Rufus growled, liking the idea of being called in his private time less and less as he remembered the tyranny of the telephone.

"The main exchange is here, in the store-rooms on the second basement level," Deirdre told him. "The order has an exchange plugged into their existing comms. The others are passive." She took a breath, gesturing vaguely. "This is all hard-wired, you understand? We had to plug it all in manually."

"I don't suppose you managed to hook into a satellite that'll give us the army's exact position in the last three days?" Nate asked her dryly.

"You didn't give us enough time to check that," Deirdre fired back at him without blinking. Dean ducked his head to hide his grin.

"How much warning do the cameras give us?" he asked.

"Fifteen minutes," she told him, glancing at Mitch for confirmation. The teenager nodded.

"Not much," Bobby said heavily.

"It's enough," Dean countered. The keeps were about a mile from each other. Even getting people from one to the other could be managed in that time frame, if everyone was on the ball. And it would certainly be enough time to get the guns ready, prepped, locked and loaded. Once they were firing, everyone would know that it had started, comms or not.

* * *

The re-introduction of a phone system had been the highlight of the meeting. It would make a huge difference to be able to talk to people straight away instead of using runners, Dean thought as he walked down the hall toward the keep doors. Alex was still over at the order and he still needed an update on the latest tablet findings.

The Jesuit knew where to hit. The people he loved were as protected as he could make them, and the thing he hadn't said out loud in the room was that he'd be there, with them, between them and the enemy. It'd still hit him, the thought of them being used, hurt or threatened to force him into handing over the tablet and the gun. Crowley would certainly have noticed it missing by now.

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Kansas**_

Sam looked at the reams of paper sitting in the overflowing trays beside Marla. She'd taken four hours break, Oliver filling her place and typing non-stop as Chuck had kept writing, and looking at her hands, he was surprised she could keep going, the knuckles were swelling a little from the constant movement.

On the other side of the long table, Alex was reading, her pen skittering down the page as she stared at the words, making corrections and writing out the less understandable phrases above the prophet's roughly scratched sentences. She re-read the paragraph she'd just corrected for sense and looked up at Sam.

"Sam, I think this might be referring to the gates."

He ran a hand back through his hair, leaning across the table as she passed him the sheet, her hand already reaching for the next when he took it.

Skimming over the words, he saw the section she meant near the bottom.

_For when Adam's sons and daughter have grown to their potential, there will be no need for the realm of punishment. Only one will be able to close the plane. Only one will purified in the completion of the trials. Only one will be tested unto death._

He stared at the notes, feeling a trickle of sweat zigzag down the back of his neck.

"Alex, are you sure about this last bit?" he asked her, holding out the page. She looked over at it and nodded.

"That's what he wrote," she said. "Chuck might be able to clarify these when he stops?"

He saw the fear at the back of her eyes, heard the slight tremor that was almost but not quite hidden in her voice. For a moment they stared at each other, their minds filled with the same, single thought.

"Maybe," he said, blinking and looking away. "Is that all?"

"No, there's more," she told him, looking back at the page in front of her and reading to the end, the sound of the pen on the paper loud in the room. Oliver had left the laptop, and Sam looked around, belatedly hearing the young man's footsteps behind him as he crossed the situation room floor and began to climb the stairs.

"Here." She passed him the next page and he started to read, his face screwed up as he concentrated on every single word, not hearing the door open or the bootsteps coming back down the stairs.

"Making progress?" Dean asked as he walked up the steps to the room. Alex nodded without looking up, Sam didn't move at all. "Don't all answer at once."

Sam grunted and looked up at him. "Chuck seems to have hit the bit about closing the gates."

Dean looked at him, seeing the worry in his brother's face. "Good news, right? What's the downside?"

"Sit down," Sam said, passing him the two sheets.

Taking them, Dean dropped into the chair opposite Alex, reading them aloud under his breath.

"_For when Adam's sons and daughter have grown to their potential, there will be no need for the realm of punishment. Only one will be able to close the plane. Only one will purified in the completion of the trials. Only one will be tested unto death_." He felt Sam's gaze on him, and kept reading.

"_The contender will complete the trials or perish. A new contender may not begin until the contract has been broken. The contract begins when the first trial has been completed_."

Looking up, he shrugged. "So once I've started, I can't back out, that's fair."

Sam's brow creased up, his face pained. "Keep reading."

"_The accursed plane is guarded by the infernal wolf_." Cerberus, he thought fleetingly. "_The wolf must be destroyed before the contract can be made_."

He put the paper down, his memory of the dog pacing along the river bank looming into his mind's eye. With the medallion, he'd be able to get close enough, he knew. Killing the sonofabitch was a more demanding task. Would the demon knife do it? Would it even get through the thick fur and muscle of the creature, he wondered? It didn't have a long blade. He didn't think, visible or not, that Cerberus would let him stand there and stab at him until he found a fatal spot.

"That it?" he asked Sam, glancing at Alex. She was still reading, brows drawn together in a frown of concentration.

Sam snorted disbelievingly and nodded. "The tablet isn't written in a linear progression," he said, his gaze going to Alex as well. "It's all mixed together."

"First job, kill Cerberus then," Dean said, getting up. "That's do-able."

"Maybe," Sam allowed. "But Dean –"

He knew the sticking point his brother was trying to bring up. "Sam, bottom-line, if Hell is shut down, that's half our problems solved for good, right?"

Alex looked up at him, her expression neutral. "It might not be that simple."

"Nothing ever is," he agreed, looking at her.

"This tablet, these … instructions … were designed to be used at the time humanity had evolved enough not to need Hell or Heaven any longer," she said, ignoring his flippancy. "They're not just about shutting the gates to keep the demons in."

"And?"

"No souls will go to Hell either, Dean," Sam explained shortly. "The whole plane would be closed."

"Problem with that?"

"Humanity hasn't evolved," Alex said dryly. "You might be exchanging one problem for another."

He looked from her to his brother, the implications sinking in. "Huh."

"There're some references to shutting the gates without closing Hell completely," she continued, gesturing at the piles beside Marla. "We haven't collated all of that yet, Katherine and Jasper are working on it."

He nodded. He hadn't thought much about the process of the other planes, other than to curse their constant fucking around with his world. But the souls of those who deliberately committed evil were sent to Hell for a reason. Having them unable to move on from this world would present an interesting increase in work for the hunters – or create no-go zones for the population if the bones couldn't be found and burned.

* * *

_**West Keep, Kansas**_

The question lay unasked between them. He'd heard it in the deep silence on the way back. Had tasted it in the unspoken grief of her kiss. Felt it in the lingering poignancy of her caresses, a bitter edge to the pleasure that immersed them, an unfulfilled yearning ache left behind in their sated bodies and senses.

Unasked and unanswered.

She would never ask, he knew. Would never put herself between him and what he thought was the best thing to do. Whatever choice he made would be his alone.

She was facing away from him, and Dean inched closer, his arms curving around her, warm skin to skin down the length of their bodies. Would he? Give this up, sacrifice everything he'd gained, everything he wanted? Everything he'd _ever_ wanted?

_Test unto death_, the tablet said, and that didn't seem all that ambiguous. An act of faith? Or just an offering, the life of one for the good of the many? He wasn't sure. Six months ago, a year ago, he'd've made that decision without reflection, sure that it was a worthwhile trade. Up until now, that was all he'd done, made the sacrifices to ensure that the fight was won, that people could live their lives in safety, as tenuous as that had been, in peace.

And it hadn't been much of a sacrifice, had it? He hadn't had anything he'd really wanted, anything that tested his choice between life and death.

He could feel her ribs, rising and falling shallowly under his arm, could hear her breath, softly whispering. Now, he had everything to lose.

_There is a right and a wrong here and you know it!_ He remembered yelling at the angel when it had become apparent that Heaven was doing everything in its considerable power to effect the rising of the devil. To save his brother, to save the world, he'd been prepared to go into a battle he'd been sure he couldn't win. And, he knew, if it were solely about saving the people here, saving his family, he would feel the same way. But it wasn't, was it? It was about giving up his life to an abstract. To the possibility, not the certainty, of saving them.

And didn't he get to have what he wanted, he wondered bleakly. _Ever?_ Because that was the price as well. Leaving his family unprotected. Turning his back on what he needed. To save a world that had, to date, shown precious little gratitude?

_I'll do whatever I have to do, I'll storm fucking Hell if that's what's needed, but only if you bring her back._

His words echoed back to him and he dragged in a deep breath. A lifetime of making deals without thinking what they meant haunted him. He'd lived with an almost impervious sense of his own mortality, never quite believing he'd die, no matter how thoroughly he tried to convince himself that he could. But … going into the fight knowing for sure, that was different, wasn't it? Knowing that he would have to give up to win. Knowing that she would be alone, raising his kids on her own. Knowing that he would never see them.

This was his father's legacy to him, he thought uncomfortably. The fierce and unyielding protection of family. John Winchester wouldn't have walked into the fire willingly if he and Sam had still needed him, still needed his strength, he knew that too. He'd done it because they'd been men and he couldn't face living with one of them dead.

Crowley wanted to control everything. Meg had told him that the demon wouldn't stop. And Father McConnaughey had told him of the messenger – the _angel_ – he'd encountered. The gates had to be closed before Crowley could get any further, before the archdemons could get loose. That was a warning he couldn't ignore.

His breath slid out in a long, feathering exhale, mingling with the scent of her skin under his cheek.

She loved him. Not in the abstract and not knowing what he'd done, and felt and who he was. She knew everything, right down to where he lived, and the peace that filled him right now, wrapped around her and breathing in the scent of her, of her skin, of her hair, musky still with their lovemaking, the _certainty_ he had in those feelings was something he couldn't give up. Didn't want to give up.

He was acutely aware that if he told her he would do it, she wouldn't argue, wouldn't try and make him change his mind, wouldn't even hold it against him in any way. A part of him wished that wasn't the case, wished for anger and a chance to fight it out.

It was, he thought sourly, typical of every decision he'd been forced into. Brought back to health by a reaper who'd killed another in his place. His father cheating Death with the deal with Azazel. The deal to save Sam's life. Giving up the part of himself he'd believed in to ease the pain only to find the cost had been much higher than he'd suspected, the cost had been breaking the first seal. Forcing himself into a cock-eyed understanding of Ruby and Sam's need for her, right up until the moment that he'd known they'd both been suckered. If he gave up his life to protect them, to lock up the demon king and every other hellspawn, who the fuck would be there when something else raised its ugly head and came looking for Winchester line?

_No._

Not this time, he thought, a slow burning fury at the forces that had been manipulating him and his brother since before they'd been born rising through him. He wasn't giving up everything he wanted and leaving them without anyone to make sure they were safe. He wasn't going to keep repeating the mistakes of the past. _Not this time_.

"No," he said aloud, a whisper against her neck. He felt her tense slightly against him, moving back a little as she rolled over in his arms.

She didn't ask him what he meant, just looked up at him, her eyes searching his. He smiled into them, brushing his mouth over her lips, the light touch flooding him with heat, answered in her as her hands slid up over his chest, wound around his neck. The sadness had gone from her touch and he was abruptly, fiercely, glad for that.

She drew back from him a little. "Are you sure? Crowley –"

He knew she'd gone over everything as he had, gone over it all with the knowledge of how he would feel if it was the wrong call. He shook his head slightly.

"I'll figure out another way," he said quietly. "There'll be another way."

"But –"

He kissed her, stopping the words and the doubts decisively. He'd never been so certain of a decision, he realised in bemusement. Never felt such a lift of the weight that habitually crushed him with a choice made. It was the right thing – the only thing – to do.

* * *

It was different again. The thought, as thick as molasses in January, barely touched him through the clamour of sensation that spread and flowed and trembled in every muscle.

Only this time, he knew why.

He tried to draw in a breath and couldn't, hips arching up as the muscles of his back and legs contracted sharply. Tried to hold on, sharp pulses around him robbing him of any conscious decision. Every rippling burst amplified feeling and he lost the division between them, lost who he was, lost everything as she clenched around him, vibration in his chest and against the inside of his lips dragged out of him before he was aware of it, the almost-unbearable ache exploding into release that shook through him, reaching every fibre, every cell.

The aftershocks dissipated slowly, small catherine wheels of pleasure fizzing out along sensitised nerve-endings. He could breathe again, could hear and see again, the images he hadn't known he'd seen replaying randomly against the blackness of his closed eyelids, drawing the dissolution of sensation out that little bit longer.

He'd let go completely, surrendered himself without the slightest thought or desire for self-protection, had put his trust in her without reservation, as nakedly vulnerable as it was possible for him to be. His lips found her temple, tasting the faint salty sheen of perspiration over her skin, listening to the soft whisper of her breath, feeling it along his skin. Nothing was going to stop him from having this, he thought. Not heaven and not hell.

* * *

_**Chambre d'ombres, France**_

"She's moving again," Michel said, staring at the situation table in the centre of the room. The green flash that was designated to the dark goddess was moving slowly across China, angling north as it headed for the eastern coast.

Alain walked over and looked at its progress. "Does she walk over the water?"

"Not that I've seen," Michel said. "At least not across the oceans."

"So she's heading for the Bering Strait?"

Michel nodded. "That's where she crossed before."

"Do we have any data for the northern latitudes, Michel?" Francesca asked, joining them at the table.

"Not a lot," Michel admitted. "The satellite's orbit is elliptical; I get a little with each pass but more in the lower latitudes. Why?"

"This winter," she said slowly, her gaze fixed on the map. "And the last three … the snow did not melt until late in the year. I am wondering if the albedo would have an effect on the patterns."

"Of course, but we haven't seen a fluctuation beyond the normal range," he told her.

She nodded. "Just wondering."

"Can we let Jerome know that Nintu is return to Alaska?" Alain asked, his gaze shifting from the enigmatic legacy to the table. "Peter and Elena will probably be another couple of weeks, but they should prepare for a place to intercept her?"

"Yes," Michel agreed, focussing on the goddess' movement. "By the time they can move around easily, she will be back in the US."

* * *

_**West Keep, Kansas**_

Bobby leaned against the side of the window frame, looking out over the patchy snow that was very slowly melting and turning into icy slush through the bailey. The whole countryside would be saturated and boggy in another week, he wasn't sure if that was going to help or hinder them with Crowley's army.

"Did Boze say anything about the airforce base in Ohio?" Dean asked Rufus, leaning back in the chair behind the desk, his boots propped on the edge of the desk. Sam sat in the chair near the fire, head tipped back and eyes closed. He'd been working around the clock on Chuck's transcripts.

"Nada," Rufus said, shaking his head. "They checked it out thoroughly, everything that could be eaten, was."

Something had changed in Dean, Bobby thought, eyes narrowing very slightly in the shadow of the brim of his cap. Something had shifted for the younger man and he couldn't pinpoint what it was. He was crackling with energy again, radiating a confidence that seemed to have no visible or easily imagined source. They were still going to be attacked by thousands of demons, under the control of the King of Hell and the fallen who'd served with Lucifer. But it didn't seem to worry the hunter at all.

"Not that we have time to go grab a couple of planes, even if they'd found any intact," he added his comment sourly, dragging his thoughts back to the discussion.

"The pilots are still there," Dean countered, looking at him with a lop-sided grin. "If we find anything we can drop bombs from, it'd give us an edge."

The papers on the desk fluttered suddenly and they looked at the angel standing in the centre of the room. Castiel's face was screwed up with anxiety.

"Dean, Raphael is here," he blurted out, staring at the man. "On this plane."

"Okay," Dean said slowly, lifting his feet from the desk and getting up. "And?"

"And I need your help," Cas said, glancing from him to Sam. "We can trap him, force him into surrender – but I can't do it alone!"

"Where exactly is he, Cas?" Sam asked, rising as well and walking to stand beside his brother.

"Illinois, possibly to meet with the Grigori."

"Illinois's two states over, Cas," Dean said, gesturing vaguely to the east. "We got things we have to do here. And I'm not sure how much help we can be when it comes to trapping an archangel?"

"Dean, if Raphael surrenders to Michael now, then I will be able to convince him to bring the Host to your aid," Cas said, his voice dropping.

Dean felt the attention of Sam, Rufus and Bobby sharpen on him at the words of the angel. Michael turning up with a few thousand angels would certainly change the dynamics of things.

"How long will it take?"

"Not long, we could be back before midnight," Cas said, looking from the others back to him. "This is our one chance –"

He nodded brusquely. "Yeah, you said that."

Looking at Sam, he lifted a brow. "Well?"

"We've got time," Sam said, glancing at the older hunters for confirmation. Both Rufus and Bobby shrugged.

"Alright, but we have to be back here before morning," Dean warned the angel. For a moment, as Cas looked at him, he felt a prickle on the back of his neck. The angel's eyes … looked different somehow.

Cas nodded and the moment of disorientation passed, the gravelly voice commanding as he stepped close to the Winchesters and his hands reached out to grip their shoulders. "We will."

They disappeared, the beat of wings echoing around the room and the papers fluttering on the desk as the air rushed in to fill the spaces they'd been.

"Think Michael will honour that?" Rufus turned and asked Bobby curiously.

The old man pushed back his cap, rubbing a hand over his eyes. "No idea," he said, brows drawing together a little. There'd been something off about the angel, but he wasn't sure if it just the urgency of the situation or something else. Castiel was usually pretty damned circumspect about promising Heaven's help.

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Kansas**_

Marla stared at the page beside her, her fingers sore, hitting the keys steadily. She didn't notice Chuck's hands slip off the stone to her left, or hear the small thud as it hit the table. Or see his eyes open wide.

He gasped and she stopped, staring at him. Three days he'd been sitting there, not eating or drinking or sleeping, just writing and the hollows in his thin face were pronounced, the purple and grey-tinged shadows that filled his eyesockets dark and deep. The blue eyes were staring at her, she thought at first, her heart leaping into her throat, settling as she realised he was staring through her, not at her.

"Chuck?"

"The army," he said, his voice cracked and raw. "They're crossing the river."

"Which river, Chuck?" Jerome asked sharply, Marla registering the soft burr of the wheelchair's tyres over the hardwood floors belatedly as he came up behind her.

"Columbia," Chuck said, blinking rapidly as he looked down at the pen in his hand, the loose piles of paper surrounding him. "Keyboard!"

Marla stood and cleared the notes around him, pushing the laptop in front of him, his gaze focussing on the backlit screen as he typed.

"The army is crossing the Missouri River," he muttered furiously, the images still playing out behind his open eyes. "Over two thousand, walking beside the trucks and trailers."

Jerome's head snapped around to the slender woman standing beside him. "Call the keep, get hold of Dean or Rufus and tell them." He looked back at Chuck. "How long till they get here, Chuck?"

"Days, a few days," Chuck murmured, the visions transferring from his mind to the screen without volition. "The fallen are pushing them hard, no rest, no stops, the demons ride all of them and force them faster."

The legacy nodded, swivelling the chair and pushing himself across to the hall. "Mitch!"

He heard the footsteps of the young man thudding in the hall, realised he'd been sleeping when he burst through the doorway, hair sticking out in all directions.

"Chuck's back, he's having a vision – a more normal vision," he amended, wondering if that term could even be applied anymore. "Take care of him."

Mitch nodded and walked to Chuck's side, his face tightening as he read the words over the prophet's shoulder.

Turning again, Jerome went down the ramp as Marla put the handset down. "You get through?"

She nodded. "Dean wasn't there, but I spoke to Rufus."

"Good," he said, leaning back in his chair. "Good. Can you tell Aaron and Jasper that we need them, please?"

She nodded, striding across the room for the hall and the stairs.

* * *

_**Olney, Illinois**_

The clearing still held the last of the light, the sky overhead shading from rose to palatinate blue along the horizon, the first stars visible in the darkening east.

"Cas?" Sam said, looking around. "What's going on?"

Dean turned, seeing the angel's mouth quirk up to one side. It was an expression he'd never seen Castiel use, a slightly derogatory smile that came close to a sneer. In the clear light, he realised that the angel's eyes weren't the right colour. Jimmy Novak's eyes were blue, but when the angel was in possession they deepened to the colour of the open ocean, a dark, clear blue. Looking at them in the luminous dusk, they were neither Novak's nor Castiel's.

"You're not Cas, are you?" he said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and taking a step away from his brother.

"No," the angel agreed readily. "Not even close."

"How is it you're in Jimmy?" Sam asked, catching up quickly and seeing what Dean was intending.

"Oh, Cas has been detained," the angel said, glancing heavenward. "And most vessels are compatible with a few of us."

"That's funny, not what we heard." Dean stared at him.

"Oh, well, you two, you're different," the angel said, smiling humourlessly at him. "But even for Lucifer and Michael, they have suitable substitutes, as you know."

"So what's the plan? Raff wants to kill us?" Dean asked, wondering what the hell they were going to do about that.

"That's about it," the angel confirmed cheerfully. "Get rid of the Winchesters and the lines will return to their original paths, Paradise on earth, all you can eat."

"You sure of that?" Sam asked casually, moving a few steps to one side. "With Hell and the fallen all jockeying for a take?"

Jimmy's eyes narrowed as the angel stared at him. "You think they'll withstand the Host?"

"Host is commanded by Michael … isn't it?" Dean asked, his expression guileless as he took another step away from his brother.

"Michael will be dead!"

"Oh, who gets that job?" Dean took a couple more steps to the right of the angel.

"Stop moving! I'd be glad to kill you myself," the angel snarled, twisting to look at him, Sam now almost behind him.

"I'll take that as a compliment," Dean told him, shifting abruptly to the right, the angel following him automatically and Sam hitting him from behind, not even trying for an incapacitating hit, just shoving with all his weight and sending the vessel sprawling into the soggy leaf fall that covered the ground.

"Go!" Dean yelled at him, aiming a fast kick at the vessel's head, seeing the jaw snap back with the force of it as he turned to follow Sam.

The angel shook his head and rolled to his knees, arms upraised. Both men were stopped in their tracks, held by a force that was crushing them, squeezing flesh against bone and the air from their lungs. Dean saw his shadow leap out ahead of him, the trunks of the trees brightening as light filled the clearing behind them.

"RELEASE THEM!"

It wasn't the high-pitched, piercing noise that had nearly melted his brain the first time he'd met Cas, Dean thought, falling forward as the force holding him vanished. And it wasn't Jimmy's voice. There was an element of both in it, though, and he rolled onto his back, eyes slitted against the white light that bled every colour from the woods.

Jimmy stood silhouetted by it, one arm protectively across his eyes, the other held out. Beyond him was the shape of a man, barely visible through the glare. Sort of a man, Dean amended, lifting his arm to shade his eyes. Taller. Broader. And the wings that extended up and out from behind him were massive, filling the clearing from side to side, and definitely not human.

It took a single stride to Jimmy's vessel, ignoring the outthrust hand and slammed its palm over his head. The light flared brightly, a miniature super-nova that seared the clearing. Dean screwed his eyes shut against it, rolling to his knees and staggering away, hearing Sam doing the same, several feet to his right.

"Dean, wait," the not-quite-Castiel voice called. He stopped, opening an eye as the light faded away, his pupil expanding rapidly in the dim glow of the slowly rising moon.

"Cas?"

"Yes," the angel said. "Raphael is coming –"

Turning, the brothers looked at the form of the angel, eyes widening in unison. Like the voice, there were aspects of the angel in front of them that were undoubtedly Castiel. Jimmy lay on the ground at the angel's feet, trenchcoat scrunched up where he'd fallen on it.

"Your pal told us," Dean snapped. "We have to get back –"

"That wasn't my friend," Castiel cut him off. "I am sorry you were deceived but it was not of my doing. I was imprisoned, when Isophiel took my vessel."

"What – is that the real you?" Sam asked, taking a step closer as he stared at the wings that were folded against Cas' back.

"No, not really," Cas said impatiently. "It's a construct. It's the closest I can come to being visible without destroying your minds."

"Get us out of here, Cas," Dean said, looking around the clearing uneasily. "Take us back to Lebanon."

"I'm afraid I can't do that," the angel said sorrowfully, walking toward him.

"Why the fuck not!?"

"Raphael is here."

Lightning encased the clearing in glowing blue tendrils, the sharp smell of burning wood as the bolts spat and crackled from trunk to trunk, throwing their shadows across the ground and each other, an acrid scent of ozone overwhelming the charred smell as the bolts grew thicker, longer and converged into the centre of the open space.

The form that materialised there was, like Castiel, humanoid in shape. Taller than the angel, broader across shoulders and chest, the unearthly and beautiful face lifted as the lightning retreated back to the tree line, forming a cage around them.

Raphael, Sam thought dazedly. Guardian of the North, Lord of Air and Light. The archangel the priests called on to make the way clear for the souls that were passing on after their last rites. He was beautiful, with a perfection that somehow hurt the mind to see. But there was no compassion on that face, no humour or caring. He stared at the two men and the angel with a look of chilling disdain, the wide, full mouth curling up in an unlovely sneer as his eyes narrowed on Castiel.

"You escaped?"

"As you see," Castiel said, taking a small step closer to the archangel.

"Michael is having doubts, I suppose?" Raphael asked coolly, his gaze flicking to Sam and then to Dean.

"Many of them."

"When these … men … are gone, it will all be as it was supposed to be," Raphael said, his golden eyes staring intently at the older Winchester.

"No," Castiel disagreed. "It won't. That time has gone. We need to be united now, more than ever before against –"

"Stop," Raphael said, his voice bored. "Get out of the way, my brother."

"No."

"Then you can die with them."

He lifted his hands, holding them apart and between the palms electricity crackled and burned. Dean tensed, watching the small bolt of tame lightning, purple edged in white, jump from hand to hand. The archangel swung his arm back and whipped it forward and the tiny bolt elongated, thickening and brightening and sizzling at came for him.

Castiel spun around, seizing both men and dragging them close to him, his wings stretching out to enclose them as the lightning struck him. Dean smelled the burning flesh and feathers, saw the angel's face crumple in agony as the current crawled over him, seeking its target. It dissipated in a series of pops and crackles and Castiel looked over his shoulder, his face grim.

"You will not harm them!"

"Watch me," Raphael drawled, drawing his arm back again.

The lightning in his hand died and vanished as darkness filled the clearing, pulling the energy from the electrical cage around them, from the archangel himself. Dean glanced at Cas, seeing the angel's eyes widen slightly as in the centre of the clearing an amorphous dimness took shape.

"Rafe, really."

The voice deepened a little as the charcoal cloud folded in and about itself, solidifying into a form, tall and black and winged.

"Gabriel, you have been out of this fight from the beginning," Raphael warned his brother, his shoulders pushing back, his wings rising. "Do _not_ become involved now!"

"It's a shame, I'll give you that, but the time for sitting on the sidelines and hoping it would all get better has come and gone," Gabriel said, a little sadly. "You have pushed and pulled at the world until you left me no choice."

"Did Michael send you?"

"No," Gabriel said. He lifted his hand and Sam saw a long, golden horn held in it. "No, this is business, Rafe. My business."

"Cover your ears," Castiel said frantically to the men, wings drawing in close around them again. "Hide your faces! Do not listen! Do not look!"

They reached for each other, standing close with their hands pressed hard over the sides of their heads, the angel's wings curved protectively around them, the scents of flowers and feathers filling noses and mouths as they ducked their heads and closed their eyes tightly.

Distantly, Dean heard the perfect notes of the horn, felt them oscillate in his bones, through the spaces in his skull. He had the feeling that if the angel's wings had not been over them, those beautiful, aching notes could have disintegrated him in a flash.

Behind them, Raphael stared as his brother's construct morphed into the form he was best known for. The slight, slender frame grew taller and broadened, pale gold and tawny feathers darkened to grey and then to black as feathers grew down the length of his arms to his wrists, shining black, raven's feathers … crow feathers. The warm, hazel eyes darkened as well, changing to indigo, the round pupils becoming vertical slits and the weak face strengthened, cheekbones widening and lifting, brows become black and winged outward. The Angel of Death stood in front of Raphael and lifted the horn, blowing into it.

Raphael felt his construct peel away, his mouth falling open in a soundless scream as the notes stripped him, first of flesh, then of the components of his energy, finally of all vestiges of the electrons and photons and neutrons that had made up his mass, his consciousness and being, scattering them outward at a speed greater than light could travel.

The electricity that the archangel had called and controlled was gone. Overhead, the moon sailed in a cloudless sky, its light dappling the grassy ground through the bare branches of the trees, the faint smell of charred wood remaining. On the ground in front of Gabriel, a long, silver sword lay, gleaming softly in the white light.

Castiel lowered his wings, turning to face Gabriel. The archangel was still in his truest visible form, and Dean dropped his gaze as Gabriel's eyes met his. How he'd had the balls to argue with him when he'd delivered Death's message, he couldn't now recall.

Sam walked past Cas and bent toward the sword, and both Gabriel and Cas reached out and held him back.

"What?"

"To touch the sword of an angel that is not attuned to you is death," Gabriel said gently, dropping a thick silk cloth over the sword and bundling it within the folds.

"What?" Sam asked Cas, glancing at Dean.

"Raphael's sword resonates at a frequency that you cannot tolerate," the angel explained, looking around impatiently. "Neither of you," he added, turning to Dean. "You could touch Michael's sword, although no other could and live."

"Because of the vessel thing?" Dean asked, not sure he got what the angel meant.

"Yes, you and Michael alone, not even Adam would be able to hold it for more than a few minutes."

"Cas, you gotta get us back to the keep," Dean said, shoving the thought of angel swords aside.

"I will –"

"Castiel, Michael is looking for you," Gabriel said abruptly, his head tilted to one side as if he was listening to something none of them could hear.

Dean's neck prickled. "No, Cas, we gotta –"

The rush of beating wings filled the clearing and stirred the branches in the trees around them.

"NO!"

Dean spun around, staring hopelessly at the empty space. Beside him, Sam knelt next to Jimmy's body, two fingers lying lightly over the artery at the side of his neck.

"He's alive."

"Fuck!" Dean yelled at the indifferent sky. "We're fucking well stuck here!"

Looking around the clearing, the moonlight shading everything including themselves in black and white and grey, Sam suddenly realised that this what Chuck had seen – or a part of it anyway. He saw Dean stop moving, head dipping as his shoulders slumped and realised that his brother realised that too.

They'd never had any luck with outrunning or out-manoeuvring the prophet's visions. He found he wasn't surprised now that this time had turned out to be the same.

* * *

_**I-70 W, Kansas**_

The interstate was cracked and buckled but not so severely that the army vehicles couldn't get through. Walking ahead of the trucks and soldiers, the two children moved fast, covering the miles as their power cleared the way, and the battalions moved through clouds of steam and over the shining, wet concrete at a pace that exceeded the capabilities of the human vessels they occupied.

They would reach the northern road in a day, Baeder thought, and divide up there. The last intelligence the demon had received had been a week and a half ago. The humans were not stupid and the defences would have been strengthened, possibly extended further out. The army would hit them from three sides, south, east and west, settling into position at the range of the guns they had dragged along.

The attack was merely a diversion. Once engaged, the nephilim and cambion would be able to approach the keeps and would find their targets. It was only the order's safehold that had not been pinpointed accurately, Crowley's men being unable to get a fix on it. And that would be where they kept their prophet, and the tablet.

Someone would talk. He had no doubt about it. He had been in Europe and in Africa. In Asia and in South America. He knew how to get information.

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Kansas**_

_The contract between the penitent and God begins from the successful completion of the first ordeal. Only death will sever the contract once begun. The destruction of the infernal wolf opens the way to the accursed realm and the second ordeal will be to retrieve an artefact from the depths. The penitent will complete the trials alone. None may accompany him for only the contract will strengthen the contender._

Rubbing her eyes, Alex looked up and set her pen down beside the completed page. Chuck had been sleeping for the past thirty-six hours and there was still no word or sign from Dean or Sam.

The trials – the ordeals – revealed on the tablet had been shoe-horned in amongst the other information, given in drips rather than as a single, linear narrative. She wasn't sure why that was the case but the little Chuck had said after he'd stopped translating and had gone into his vision suggested that the tablet was supposed to be studied as a whole before it could be analysed for its contents. They didn't have time for that, she thought, looking at the reams of paper stacked around the library. Everyone there was reading, making notes, trying to get the pieces to fit together. Jerome, Katherine and Davis, Jasper and Felix and Aaron, Marla and Oliver and Frances. As each typed transcription had been finished Jerome and Jasper had scanned the information into the database and sent it to the other chapters, and those scholars were studying the information as well.

There were discrete sections, she thought. The weapons and the lists and the histories. Even the trials were clearly apart from the rest, set out with little ambiguity. Why then was the delivery of the information stirred and presented in such confusion? The way God spoke? The angel, Metatron, had taken down the Word from God Himself, Jasper had said of the legends surrounding the tablets that they'd been able to find. Perhaps it was just the way God gave information.

She glanced into the cup beside her and picked it up, face screwing up a little as she downed the cold coffee in it. She would make another pot later.

The next section was a detailed description of the methods of transporting demons and moving around the levels of Hell in the various forms. Alex began to skim over the text, then stopped, her pen tip lifting from the paper. In fact, this was vital information to the second ordeal, she realised abruptly.

The accursed plane behaved differently according to the parameters of the being that entered. Souls were directed in a single downward spiral, they could not deviate from the course between the starting point and their final destination. The demons who were souls were likewise bound to a single route between levels and within those levels. Only the upper hierarchies had the power to change their directions and only when they formed a physical construct for their existence. If they remained as tainted souls, no matter how powerful, they could not rise once they had descended. Flesh and blood and breath saw a different layout altogether and travelled between the actual levels of Hell and the corresponding, ghost levels of its echoes in the material plane.

She stared at the stacks on the other side of the room unseeingly. In Chitaqua, Castiel had told her of the raising of Dean's soul from the seventh level. The Host of angels had been in constructs and the layouts of the plane had remained fixed and tangible. They had seen the souls and the demons and had fought on the upper levels, while he had taken a unit deeper. Even Dean had been in the construct he'd created involuntarily, the memories of his body as his soul had perceived it. It'd only been when the angel had taken his consciousness of himself that he'd returned to the intangible form of a soul.

Guiding points were required for negotiating Hell in mortal form. Strong memories or strong images that the plane could recognise would move the halls and caverns and stairs and levels around a living being. How then would a contender find the artefact, without knowing what it was? Without seeing it?

It would be in there, somewhere, she thought, looking back at the page. But she needed to make sure that the details that seemed randomly thrown together were separated and included with the details of the ordeals. They weren't random, they were all essential to the successful completion of the trials, to the final stage that would enable the closing of the gates.

The bombs. The binding sigils for projectiles – the tablet had specified arrowheads and spear tips, but Franklin and his apprentices had already used them on every shell, bullet and piece of shrapnel he'd designed for the defence of the population – they were all to allow a mortal through the halls of Hell.

_The archdemons are nine in number. Each one rules a level of the accursed plane. No weapon save the divine will wound or kill them. They are the Fallen. Those angels who in their loyalty to their rebellion leader chose to share his punishment. Each one was a powerful seraph in Heaven. Each one endured the wrath of the Morning Star for a thousand years. Each one is deadly to anyone within their sphere of influence. Asmodeus, ruler of the first level. Pythius, ruler of the second level. Merihem, ruler of the third level. Belphigor, ruler of the fourth level. Mammon, ruler of the demons of the abyss and the dividing point between the upper and lower levels. Astaroth, ruler of the fifth level. Belial, ruler of the sixth level, the Lake of Fire. Moloch, ruler of the seventh level. No ruler lives or minds the Wastelands that is the eighth level. Baal is the ruler of the ninth level and the Keeper of the Cage._

_No weapon save the divine_, she thought, underlining the phrase in frustration. What did that mean? That only an angel could kill them? If they were deadly to anyone who came near them, how was the contender supposed to get past them? Were they like the angels and the half-breeds and the fallen, that only removing the heart would destroy them?

He wasn't going to do it. He'd told her he wouldn't give up what he had. She believed him, believed that he wanted to live, but an insidious sense, a creeping feeling that lived cold in her heart, suggested that he may not have a choice in the matter. He'd never had a choice before.

_The ninth level is a labyrinth of ice. At the centre is the Cage. The penitent will enter the Cage and take the sword of the Most Unclean from him. The sword is brought back and the trial is completed with the renewal of the contract with God._

She stared at the words, skimming frantically down the page. There was nothing further there about the second trial. Just get into Hell, get down to the ninth, past the archdemons who can't be killed but who can kill without a touch, grab the sword of Lucifer and bring it back up. Shaking her head, she re-read the page twice more before conceding that so far as instructions were concerned, that was it.

It was possible that there was more, buried in the writings on the stone that Chuck hadn't yet deciphered. It was possible that somewhere, on the tablet, in the prophet's mind, in God's narrative, there was a detailed set of instructions to killing the archdemons. But it wasn't here.

She pushed back from the table and got up, walking fast to the kitchen with her empty cup. Caffeine. Strong. Lots of it. And a few deep breaths to dispel the fear and anxiety and doubt along the way.

* * *

_**Lightning Oak Ridge, Kansas**_

The bright shrill ring of the phone was at once so ordinary, yet so unfamiliar after four years without, that both Bobby and Ellen sat and stared at the handset for some moments before Ellen rocketed out of her chair and reached for it, snatching it up and holding it to her ear.

"Hello?"

The conventions remained the same, Bobby thought, passing her a paper and pen as she gestured wildly at him. He looked down as she wrote, brows drawing together.

"Thanks, we've got it," Ellen said crisply, putting the handset down in the cradle and looking at him. "Well, we're in it now. The monitors picked them up coming in on 150 W, School Avenue from the east and up the 281. They're going to hit us on three fronts."

Bobby nodded. "Time to go," he said shortly. "They'll hit the hot zone in five minutes after passing the cameras."

"Bobby, I'm still –" Ellen started to say.

"No arguments, Ellen," Bobby cut her off. "Get in the truck."

* * *

_**Belleville, Illinois**_

"What the fuck?" Dean said as they climbed up on the off ramp to the wide concrete road.

In both directions, the interstate was clear, the surface lumpy and cracked and fissured, but no snow, no water, no cars or junk heaps, or even a fallen leaf as far as they could see east or west.

Behind them, Jimmy staggered up the incline, stopping as he looked curiously in both directions. "What?"

"Road's clear," Sam said, flicking a glance at him. Cas' vessel had had a hard time. He'd woken unwillingly, starving hungry, tired and thirsty and hadn't wanted to hear about what had been going on since the last time he'd been left by the angel.

"So?"

"So, the last time we came through here, it wasn't," Dean snapped impatiently at him.

"This is the way they came," Sam said to his brother quietly. Dean nodded.

However they'd done it, this was the most direct route to Kansas, and with the ability to clear it, it would also be the best surface for their vehicles and personnel, he thought. They were ahead, probably a long way ahead by now.

"Come on," he said brusquely, not looking at either of the men behind him. "We'll get off at St Louis, might find a vehicle there."

It was possible. Unlikely, but possible. Fury simmered in him and he ignored the protest of muscles that had been walking solidly for two days now, ignored the growling in his stomach at the lack of food, ignored the graininess in his eyes from lack of sleep. Chuck had been right and they weren't there, and the army would be before they could get home.

Walking behind him, Sam didn't argue. They needed food and they would need to sleep sometime soon, but he knew full well that Dean was not stopping until he dropped, and no amount of rational talk would change that.

"Why can't we stop?" Jimmy said, struggling to keep up with Sam's longer stride.

"There's an army heading for our home," Sam said, glancing at him. "We're probably going to be too late anyway."

"We can't walk to Kansas!"

Sam's smile was completely devoid of humour. "Sure we can," he told the man sourly. "And if we don't find a working vehicle of some sort soon, that's exactly what we'll be doing."

* * *

"Dean, slow down," Sam called as the faint noise registered again. Twice now, he'd heard it, unable to pinpoint the direction or what it could be, but it wasn't natural and it wasn't that far off. And he thought it was getting closer.

"What?"

"Can you hear that?" Sam stopped and held an arm to stop Jimmy as well. Dean scowled at him but half-closed his eyes, concentrating on listening.

The low hum wasn't far at all, Sam thought. A car? A truck? He let his eyes close and turned slowly on the road, stopping when he thought it was loudest.

"Car," Dean said shortly, facing the same direction.

"Get off or stay on?"

Looking down the open and empty straight stretch in front of them, Dean shrugged. "Stay on," he decided. "There's three of us. We'll try and take it if they're not friendly." His fingers slipped around to the back of his hip, resting lightly on the bone-handled knife.

The vehicle appeared fifteen minutes later, the wide, boxy shape instantly identifiable. Sam sucked in a breath, wondering if it was a straggler from the main force.

"Sam! Dean!"

The voice was familiar and both men turned to look as the humvee drew up beside them, Peter's face visible in the open driver's window, smeared with dirt and blood.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

* * *

_**Woodland Keep, Kansas**_

Through the high magnification of the glasses, Vince could see the entire field, and the details of the demon-possessed soldiers crossing it. He watched them advance, several long lines, loosely spread out, and waited until the first tracked light tanks had crossed the boundary marked at one end by the lightning-struck tree, and at the other by a leaning boulder above the narrow stream. Then he nodded.

Behind him, Joseph hit the switches on the simply wired panel, sending radio signals sequentially across the field. The mines exploded, five lines right across the bare and ploughed up field, sending car-sized chunks of half-frozen ground twisting into the air, thousands of razor-edged pre-packed metal shards through the flesh and blood of the demon's measuits and at the rear, the larger charges, packed with iron pellets in a thick suspension of blessed saline solution, the salt concentration so heavy the liquid was almost a paste.

Looking through the glasses, Vince smiled as he viewed the carnage. "I do believe we got their attention, Joe," he said contentedly.

* * *

_**White Stream Keep, Kansas**_

"Nate."

The dark-haired hunter looked around slowly, following Danielle's eyeline to the woods. He could see them now, their desert camouflage not quite blending in with the leafless branches and patches of snow still humped into drifts and piles against the iron-grey trunks of the trees.

"Ready?"

She nodded, tucked down below the crenellated lip of the square tower's roof. He shifted his position and nodded, and they hit the line of switches in front of them.

_BOOM! Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom!_

The mines buried through the thin forest went off one after the other in a cannonade, trees falling and men screaming and fire licking at the damp undergrowth and the dry, fallen timber.

They watched the demons staggering out through the trees and settled themselves behind the guns, strafing the open ground and the outermost line of the woodland edge, engraved rounds punching into the meatsuits and expanding immediately, gouging gaping holes through organs and bone and muscle and remaining in the incapacitated bodies as they fell.

"How many?"

"No more than a hundred here," Nate growled as he released the trigger, gaze scanning the field and woods for movement. "They're breaking into smaller units, hoping we'll waste our ammo."

She nodded, glancing down at the metal cases that lined the low parapet in rows two and three deep. "Don't know Franklin, do they?"

* * *

_**West Keep, Kansas**_

The shrill whistle of projectiles, the concussive thunder of the explosions as they found a target, the sharp chatter of gunfire, incoming and returned, found their way even through the thick walls of the keep and Alex found herself listening for the sounds, and for any difference in them, as she moved through the halls with Merrin, triaging the men and women lying on cots along the walls around Kim's offices.

"Alex."

Looking down, she saw Rudy, upper arm and shoulder roughly dressed and seeping blood.

"Rudy, has anyone looked at you?" she asked, stopping and leaning over him to lift the edge of his jacket aside. "Do you have any other injuries?"

He shook his head. "No, we were in the south court when a part of the wall came down."

She lifted her bag to the edge of the cot and began to unwind the sodden dressings.

"Have you seen Michael?" he asked her, trying to lever himself upright. "I thought I saw him come in."

"He might be with Kim," she said, laying a light hand on his shoulder. "Just stay still until I get this cleaned up." She drew in a breath as the damage became visible. "Can you make a fist, Rudy?"

He closed his hand and tightened it, face twisting up in pain. "Sort of."

"Alright, I'm going to have to clean this out," she muttered. "What's going on out there?"

"They've got artillery on both sides, but they're concentrating on the walls," he said, leaning back as the colour drained from his face. "Uh … Maurice said that they don't want to bring the towers down."

"Not yet," she murmured under her breath. "How many, do you think?"

He gave her a pained grin. "No idea. My first war."

"Make sure you stay alive to have a second," she said to him, flushing the wounds out.

"Tryin'." He tensed as she picked out the debris. "We haven't seen Dean."

"He's not here, right now," she told him, drawing the torn flesh together. "I can't stitch this, Rudy, there're no edges." He nodded and she spread the creamy paste that Oliver had brought with them over the pulped muscle, keeping it together with a gauze pad as she wound a clean bandage around the upper arm.

"I heard that Lightning Oak was knocked down," he said, his eyes closing as the pain got worse.

"When did you hear that?" she asked worriedly, finishing the shoulder bandage and tying it off.

"About an hour ago, Maurice cleared a path …"

"Rudy," she said, looking down at him. Overloading, she thought. She found the antibiotic shot in the bag and gave it to him, then the morphine, pinning a small yellow tag on the corner of the bandage.

Looking at her watch, she saw it was past six. It would be dark outside now, and there was no way to get across the country to the other keep with the demons massing around them. Ellen had told her about Cas coming and getting Dean and Sam. The older woman now thought it must have been a trap for them. They were supposed to have returned the same night. She tried not to think about what kind of a trap the angels had set for them.

Making her way along the corridor, she headed for the stairs, climbing the flights to the roof. The noise was a thousand times worse as she came out of the doorway to the top of the keep tower, the night brilliant with the fires that burned all around the keeps, in the woods between them and in the baileys below. Keeping to the high tower that ran halfway around the roof, she saw more flames leaping to the north and east, muzzle flashes from the forts that were squat black shadows in the darkness and the occasional red-painted sparkling fall of Franklin's scatter bombs as they diverted the enemy's heat or laser-tracked missiles.

* * *

_**Ghost Valley Farm, Kansas**_

Riley lay full length along the barn roof, invisible in the shadow from the gable. He could see them moving across the fields now, emboldened by the covering darkness that prevented the closest fort from strafing them. Well, they'd get a surprise when they hit the woods that ran along the lane, he thought with a dry satisfaction.

In the two houses that were on either side of the interlocking farmyards below him, their people were already evacuating through the narrow tunnels that led out to the north-west. Dean had been right, he thought absently. They weren't interested in the people, unless they could provide leverage against the leaders for what they'd come for. They needed people. Hard to be potentate of the world without slaves, after all. No different from any other tinpot dictator the world had seen since the beginning.

His concentration narrowed as he saw the first flicker of movement at the edge of the woods. Give 'em time, he told himself calmly, thumb resting on the radio control. Everyone should enjoy the fun.

When he was sure that they were all within the tree line he pressed the trigger and watched the mines go up.

* * *

_**Blue Springs, Missouri**_

The car leapt over the lifted section of concrete and the passengers, crowded tightly together inside, ducked their heads and braced their hands against the roof as they hit the concrete surface on landing, the hard suspension rattling their teeth with the impact.

Sam flicked a sideways glance at his brother. Dean's gaze was fixed forward, hands tight around the wheel as his eyes scanned over the lit road in front of them, the boxy vehicle swerving to avoid wider fissures and the worst sections of the fractured interstate. Trying to give his brother as much elbow room as possible to drive, Sam was pressed against Elena and Peter in the front seat, Jimmy and the three Qaddiysh squashed together in the rear seat.

Dean'd been driving for eighteen hours straight now, and despite Peter's occasional suggestions that they swap, which the hunter ignored, he was obviously going to take them all the way. The last sign still standing by the side of the road had advised that Kansas City was twenty miles ahead.

"We have to stop, Dean," he said in a low mutter. "We have to eat."

He saw his brother's mouth thin out, the jaw muscle bunch and sighed. "I know you can keep going, but we can't. Jimmy can't."

"Just an hour," he tried again.

To his surprise, Dean nodded abruptly, his gaze unwavering in front of him. "Alright, we'll eat."

Hearing Sam's soft exhale, Dean realised that Sam was wondering how close to the edge he was. He flexed his fingers around the big, vinyl-covered wheel, loosening the tension in them.

_Pretty damned close_, he thought acidly. They'd played him perfectly, as always, and he'd swallowed it, hook, line and sinker, trusting in Cas and never even thinking that it could've been a trap, despite the timing being so close to what the demon was doing.

In the back, the Qaddiysh had the box, the one that could capture the wandering creators and lock them away, and he could not have given a rat's about it. He'd promised himself that Chuck would be wrong this time, that he would be there, and that Crowley and the Grigori would fucking well die on the fields surrounding the keep. The gun could've done it, he knew. They were not immune to Colt's bullets. And destiny – or Heaven – or the prophet or the Word or whatever the hell it was that manipulated the events surrounding him and Sam, had won again. He wasn't going to make it back in time. He knew it.

_They'll be fine_, he told himself, unaware that his knuckles had whitened again. _They're protected even from the cambion, even from the dark half-breed. They'd be there_.

The interstate had been cleared. He didn't know how. The cambion had enormous power when they were young, both Jasper and the angel had told them that. The power to change reality. The power to make reality. Or to unmake it. Pushing the thoughts aside, he focussed on the next exit. Sam was right. He could run on his nerves, could run on the adrenalin surging through him but when he got there, he'd be useless and so would the others. They would stop and eat and then go on.

* * *

_**West Keep, Kansas**_

"Don't tell me what I know!" Crowley screamed at the demon cringing in front of him. He snapped his fingers and the demon and meatsuit disintegrated, a puff of ash floating away on the slight breeze.

"Crowley, you are reducing our numbers," Dietrich said mildly, flicking the ash from his sleeve. "Calm down."

"The walls are holding!" the demon spat at him, eyes red with fury. "How the hell are we supposed to get in there if they're holding?"

"That is not the concern," Baeder told him, his voice clipped with impatience. "Draxler, have you located the chapter house?"

"We have it narrowed to an area, slightly east of north of the town," the half-breed said expressionlessly. "It is protected by illusions we cannot penetrate at a distance."

"Then quarter the area with men, inch by inch," Baeder order him. The cambion shrugged and turned away.

"Hang on a minute," Crowley snapped, staring at Baeder. "Since when are you running this battle?"

The Grigori turned to look at him, firelight reflecting in the pale remaining eye. He gestured once, abruptly, and the demon stiffened, his arms clamped tight to his sides as he was lifted from the ground.

"Since I have decided that you are too emotional to make rational decisions," Baeder said coolly, lifting his head slightly. He turned away and the demon king fell to the ground, sucking in huge mouthfuls of air, his face twisted in anger.

"There are many things you are useful for, Crowley," Baeder continued conversationally. "But you are no longer in charge. Am I making myself understood?"

He turned back as Crowley got to his feet, hands searching frantically over his body.

The fallen angel smiled. "Yes, but you will not find on your person. This spell has lodged deeper."

Dietrich looked from one to the other. "What are you talking about, Baeder?"

The misshapen face turned toward him. "Insurance, my brother. A little insurance."

He looked across the burning woods toward the farms in the distance. "Have we taken any prisoners?"

"A few," Dietrich admitted. "We intercepted a group moving from the destroyed keep."

"Bring me one; the spell will need fresh blood."

Dietrich nodded.

* * *

Draxler stood in the shadows of great wall, looking down at the children in front of him.

"When you get in, you must find these people," he told Jesse, handing him the list of names. "The soldiers will take you to them. Take hold and bring them out, back to me here."

Jesse nodded seriously, reaching out to take Alison's hand. The children vanished and the cambion moved back against the wall, knowing he was invisible under the cover of the shadows, hearing the fusillade from the opposite side of the keep as the army moved closer and redoubled the attack along the wall.

* * *

Jesse stood in the bailey, eyes wide as he watched people running across the enormous courtyard, the thick curtain wall shaking as the bombs exploded against it. He drew Alison back toward the tall tower as cracks began to appear in the concrete, the shuddering growing more pronounced.

"Hey!" The man's voice was right behind them and they turned together, looking at him. "What the hell are you two kids doing out here?!"

"We were looking –" Alison's thin, light voice was drowned beneath the roaring fall of the concrete and stone behind them.

"Christ!" The soldier said, grabbing her shoulder and dragging both to the keep steps as the wall crumbled, blocks of stone and concrete and the heavy fill sending clouds of dust and smoke rolling into the bailey. "Inside, now!"

They ran past him through the doors, dodging the men and women racing through the big hall, glancing curiously around.

"Herb!" The soldier shouted at a tall, thin man running past. "Got a couple of lost kids here, get 'em somewhere safe!" He looked down at them as the man skidded to a halt and turned toward them. "Go with him, he'll help you find your family, okay?"

They nodded and watched the soldier go back out through the heavy iron doors.

"Who are you kids with?" Herb leaned down and looked at them. Jesse felt the paper slip from his hand as Alison looked at it behind his back.

"Alex and Ellen," the little girl said, pushing the list back into Jesse's closing hand. "They know where our – family is."

"Alright, they're down in medical," Herb said, glancing at the doors. "We'll get you over there right away."

They followed him through a number of rooms filled with people loading weapons, cleaning minor wounds, eating and drinking, into a longer, quieter corridor. He glanced back over his shoulder, making sure they were keeping up as he strode along. With the wall breached, they were firing through the gaps now, the demons unable to advance into the keep but the inner buildings more at risk.

"Here we are," Herb said as he reached the hall, heart sinking slightly as he saw that the number of cots along the walls had increased in the last two hours. "Come on."

Jesse looked at the sigils and wards painted along the walls and over the floors and ceilings. The demons could not enter here, he thought distractedly, nor the fallen. Not even the nephilim could cross the circle that spanned the corridor. These people, whoever they were, knew the guards that kept almost everything out. But not him, he thought. Not him and Alison.

"Ellen!" Herb called and slowed as the woman appeared in the doorway, thick, dark gold hair drawn back from her face as she looked around questioningly. Herb opened his mouth to tell her about the children when the shell hit the side of the keep tower and the building shuddered, rock falling from cracks that were skating along the walls. Alison darted past him as Ellen flinched back, her arm going over her head. Only Jesse saw the little girl enter the circle in front of the office door, enter it and disappear in an eyeblink flash of light. He stared at the circle disbelievingly.

"Ellen, these kids asked –" Herb said, ducking out of the way as a chunk of concrete dropped from the ceiling.

"Where are they?" Ellen stepped back through the doorway, looking down the hall at the little boy who stood behind the hunter. "You looking for me, hon?"

He nodded. "And Alex? My mother said –"

Another few pieces dropped from the rapidly shattering concrete and Ellen glanced up and over to Herb. "Get these people out of here, grab whoever's still standing, we need to move them to a more stable area," she yelled at him, turning to look behind her. "Alex? Kim? Okay in there?"

Jesse watched as a younger woman came out, a cut on one cheek and dust covering her hair and face as she coughed. "Yeah, we got the concussion and lost the power but Kim and Merrin are fine."

Stepping a little closer he stared at them. There was another name from the list. "My sister – she was hurt bad," he said to them, gesturing vaguely behind him. "Can you help?"

"Kim!" Ellen turned back into the room as a slender dark-haired woman ran out. "Got an injury out here."

"Injuries everywhere," Kim snapped, her expression softening a little as she looked at the boy. "Where?"

The three women were in the corridor now, on the other side of the trap that had taken Alison and Jesse took a long stride toward them. He couldn't think about Alison now, he knew. He had a job to do. He lifted his hands as the dark-haired woman put her hand on his face, reaching out to the other two. He touched them.

And disappeared.


	14. Chapter 14 One Fine Day

**Chapter 14 One Fine Day**

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Kansas**_

Ariana stood outside the door of the building that was mostly hidden in the hillside, feeling the liquid drying over and around her eyes, resisting the impulse to rub it off. The long strokes of burned blood were what enabled her to see the building, the door, amidst the illusions she knew were all that were visible to the demons crowding uneasily by the edge of the road.

In front of the doorway, however, there was a circle she could not cross.

Draxler walked up to her, the young boy trailing behind him. The loss of the other child had infuriated Baeder almost to the point of losing his reason. The half-breed had taken the child from the ranting man and brought him into the forest. Both man and child had the same blackened red streaks painted over their eye sockets, extending out to wrap around the temples and disappear into the hairlines. The fallen were capable of that level of sorcery, at least, Draxler thought sourly.

Glancing to the right of the nephilim, Draxler nodded to the son of Harrer, the only other non-scarred offspring of the Grigori with them. They hadn't expected to see the wards against the nephilim. The original plan had been jettisoned without hesitation and the children had become the keys instead. It had put them back some hours.

"The circle bars us from this place," Ariana said softly to him, gesturing at the sigil drawn in blood over the ground and door and reinforced walls.

"That will not be a problem," Draxler said neutrally, holding his hand to the boy beside him. "When the way is clear, enter and destroy all resistance."

She nodded, watching the man and boy walk toward the door.

The flash was soundless and the door, the warding circle and nearly three foot all around the frame was simply gone. Automatic fire rattled from the inside but the cambion walked through it, and Ariana looked at Joaquin and nodded, walking together through the hole in the hillside, lifting the barrels of their rifles.

Marla stared up as the man and boy walked along the gallery, followed by another two people, a tall woman and a broad-shouldered man, their guns lifted and spraying bullets around the room as they descended the curving staircase.

She scuttled under the cover of the iron steps, lifting her weapon as the soldiers dropped to their knees across the library's entrance and fired continuously at the four intruders, blinking as they disappeared a moment later, charred ash on the top step where they'd been. The boy lowered his hands without missing a stride.

Chuck stood in the centre of the library, the tables pushed aside. Above and below him the traps had been laid into ceiling and floor and holy oil burned in a circle around him, the flames lighting his face and reflecting in his wide, frightened eyes.

The prophet had to be saved. It was the only thought she had left. She leapt out of the alcove, her thumb automatically flicking the gun in her hands to automatic and pulled back on the trigger.

The woman turned as a row of black holes stitched across her chest and through her face, knocking her backwards into the man. Changing the aim slightly, Marla held the gun down, the savage recoil numbing her wrists and shoulders as another line of holes appeared across the man's body. She was already moving away when she saw the barrel of his gun lift toward her, her magazine out and a long, rolling dive taking her behind the situation table.

Felix and Davis started shooting from both sides of the library's doorway as the man and boy climbed the steps toward the prophet, the bullets stopped by a force surrounding them. Davis leapt up, the falchion in his hand swinging in a low hissing arc, and felt the blade shudder as it impacted with the unseen wall, the jarring vibration travelling through his fingers and up his arm as the man turned impossibly fast and swept it aside with a thicker, heavier blade. A big hand wrapped around the old man's throat and lifted him effortlessly from the floor. He was shaken once, the crack of his vertebrae loud in the room, and dropped.

The boy stood in front of the circle of flame and looked at the man standing within it. From the hall, Adam raced across the room, booming retorts from the .45 held in one hand echoing around the high ceiling, the holes punching through into the man as he turned back to the boy.

_Don't shoot at the boy_, he told himself, ducking and rolling behind the table as the man brought a rifle up and bullets filled the air where he'd been. _Kill the man, he doesn't have the same power, then the boy_.

He saw the man stagger back as Jerome threw a ball of lightning at him, saw him shake his head and catch hold of the shelves beside him, and lifted his gun, firing smoothly at the side of the man's face he could see. The bullets punched through, exiting at the back of the man's head and spattering the books behind him with gore, then Adam was turning at the movement in his periphery.

Two more walked up the stairs, bleeding freely from a number of holes that glinted red through their clothing. Nephilim, he thought, swinging his gun around. The dark-haired man was down, the woman and younger man had split up, moving up both sides of the room.

He lifted his gun to aim at the tall man when he heard Chuck shout out, spinning around and seeing the boy walk across the flames. Chuck backed away, his gaze swinging to either side of the burning oil, his face frantic with fear as he saw the nephilim waiting for him.

A hand closed around the back of Adam's neck and he struggled as he was lifted from the floor, the thumb driving into the nerve centre, paralysing him as a nightmarish face filled his vision. A small entrance hole marred one stubbled cheek and a much larger, torn-apart exit hole on the other side revealed the half-breed's jaw and teeth through tattered flesh. Dark eyes stared into his.

"Where is the tablet?"

The grip shifted on him, thumbs driving into the softer flesh to either side of the neck. Adam stared at the man silently.

"I won't ask again," the man said, the words mushy with the air aspirated through the hole in his cheek. "Where is it?"

The barrel of the man's gun rose and he felt it press hard into his abdomen. He stared defiantly at the man. The shot was muffled by the contact and Draxler dropped him, leaving him on the floor as he looked around the library. He gestured to the nephilim abruptly.

"Search – every level!"

In the circle, Chuck stared at the boy in front of him. "You don't have to do this," he said softly. "You have the power to do anything you want."

Jesse looked at him blankly. "Alison died today."

"I'm sorry," Chuck said, seeing the shock behind the boy's big hazel eyes. "I'm sorry but do you want more people to die?"

Jesse shook his head, lunging forward suddenly, his small hand closing around Chuck's wrist. "No," he whispered and closed his eyes.

The flames around the circle shook and bowed as Chuck and the boy disappeared.

Draxler looked at the man in the wheelchair. His head was tipped back, a spreading stain of red appearing from the hand that was pressed against his side.

"Where is the tablet?" he asked him, crossing the room.

Jerome looked up at him, his face drawn and pale. "You're cambion," he said, coughing at the effort. "You can find anything."

For a moment, he thought that the man would break his neck, but he stopped, turning as the nephilim returned to the library, shaking their heads.

"Tell your leader that we have hostages, and we have the prophet. We will trade in Iowa. Highway 34. Ottumwa. Iowa."

Swinging around, Draxler walked back down through the library, his gaze scanning the shelves as he passed. This would be a place he could search, he thought distantly. When he had freed himself of the fallen. He would return here and look.

* * *

_**Hastings, Nebraska**_

It was full light when the truck's engine growled and the heavy vehicle slowed down, bumping as it pulled off the road. The engine was turned off and they heard the other vehicles stopping, voices shouting around them. Alex looked at Ellen, one brow lifted slightly. Ellen shrugged.

The opening of the flap at the back of the truck startled all three of them and they drew back from the man who stood silhouetted against the brighter light outside. As her eyes adjusted, Alex realised that she was looking at one of the Grigori, the details that remained fuzzy and blurred actually burn scars, his features gone from one side of his face.

"Get her unlocked from the others," Baeder commanded, and a dark-haired man climbed into the back of the truck, grabbing Alex's wrists and jerking them upward, the chain connecting her to Ellen and Kim tautening and pulling them forward.

"Watch it –" Kim snapped at him, and his hand moved in a blur of speed, loosely closed, the crack of his knuckles against her cheekbone and eye socket shockingly loud. Ellen saw her head snap back from the blow, her eyes rolling up in their sockets and leaned forward, ready for the pull of weight on her wrists as Kim slumped to the side. Alex stared down at her hands in silent fury, watching as the man unlocked the cuffs, taking Kim's unconscious weight from them.

He pulled her to her feet and pushed her toward the open flap and she climbed down, looking carefully at each of the faces that surrounded her. Another tall man, his skin burned over the scalp and one ear, but his face unmarked. Another Grigori, she thought, Dean's descriptions coming back to her as she stared at them.

A shorter man, dark hair receding and dark eyes watching her thoughtfully, the crisp black suit and polished black shoes an unnecessary affectation in battle conditions. Dean's caustic comments about the King of Hell returned to her and she felt a slight satisfaction at her identification. Crowley.

Behind him, a tall, impossibly beautiful woman with a long fall of auburn hair and vivid silvery-grey eyes watched her, the young man standing beside her as beautiful as she was. This was the offspring of angels and humans, she thought, looking at his chiselled features and brilliant sky-blue eyes, the blond hair cut short around his face the exact colour of wheat ready to harvest.

"Come with me," the man with half-a-face said to her, and she walked away from the truck, aware of the dark-haired man close behind her, the others following more slowly.

She couldn't imagine what they wanted with her. Dean would be no more or less likely to deal with them if they treated her kindly or tortured her. Perhaps they didn't know that about him, she considered. They'd taken Ellen and Kim. They must've had some clues to realise that he would trade the stone for either woman as well. Or was the deal just a charade?

The Grigori had stopped in front of a large, long truck. She watched him climb the set of stairs that extended from the smaller door in the rear. A hand prodded her back and she climbed into the truck reluctantly.

Inside the steel framed back, equipment lined the walls and partially filled the centre, the forward end of the truck mostly hidden behind a thick black curtain that covered three-quarters of the width of the truck.

The fallen angel turned to face her, his mouth lifting on one side, remaining fixed in place on the other. The effect was stilted, as if she were looking at a robot attempting a human expression, she thought.

"You understand why you are here?"

She looked at him expressionlessly. He would try and trade her and Ellen and Kim for the tablet. He seemed very confident that Dean would make the deal. He didn't need any other information from her about the matter, she decided, remaining silent.

As if he'd read her thoughts, he nodded understandingly. "Silence is indeed a potent weapon in many situations. Fortunately, this is not one of them. I need very little from you. But I'm afraid you will suffer."

The door behind her slammed shut and she spun around. The truck was empty except for the two of them, and she thought suddenly of weapons, anything she could use to disable the man in front of her. She didn't see his hand rise suddenly, just felt cold metal against the side of her neck and the sharp stab of the needle as it slid into the artery in her neck.

* * *

Ellen leaned back against the metal side of the truck, pressing her hand against the throbbing ache in her head. Despite all their preparations, the little boy had walked in unimpeded and just taken them, she thought caustically. She'd overhead him telling the dark-haired man that Alison had disappeared in the keep – a second demon child, she wondered, caught in the trap as the little boy and the man should've been? It was possible. The boy had sounded upset.

There were two demons guarding the truck, she knew. They'd been standing there when the back flap of canvas had been lifted. She thought back through all she knew, trying to find the pieces that would fit together, would give her an idea of the shape of the plans of those holding them, something she could use.

"What do they want with Alex?" Kim asked her in a soft voice. The slender doctor had a bruise, swelling and purpling the side of her face and a tooth missing from the front of her mouth.

"I don't know, hon," Ellen said, her voice equally low. If they had been ordinary men, she might have hazarded a guess as to what they wanted, but they weren't, and her feeling was strong that whatever needs they had, it didn't include the assault of their prisoners.

They had Chuck. She'd seen him dragged between two demons and put onto another truck as the sky had lightened. She thought they'd have just been killed and dumped if they'd found the tablet. And they obviously hadn't searched for any of the translations of the tablet either; the dark man who'd taken them from Jesse and chained them together had come out with the two nephilim carrying nothing else.

Looking at her hands, the wrists held together by simple handcuffs, she thought of how she was going to get out of here. Kim wouldn't survive on her own, over the miles of country to get back to the town. Alex might, she thought, depending on what shape she was returned in. They'd probably been looking for Ben, she thought. Had thought they'd all be together. They _had_ all been together, but Ben had been running a message from Maurice to Liev about the tunnels at the time they'd come in. Alex was the key to Dean. She and Kim were more or less expendable at any point. Would they miss her if she slipped out once Alex was back? She wasn't sure. The demons outside the truck had been talking earlier about the route they were taking. Due east mostly. They'd mentioned Cleveland, but she didn't get the feeling that was the final destination.

* * *

The flashlight beam bobbed on the outside of the canvas covering, giving them a moment's warning. It'd been dark for close to an hour, Ellen realised, glancing at her watch as the flap opened and Alex was forced back to the bench seat beside Kim. She held the cuffs tightly as the chain was pulled through the rings, her fingers curled up under her palms.

"Alex, are you alright?" Kim leaned toward the younger woman, looking worriedly at the dazed expression on her face.

"Fine," Alex said, shaking her head slightly as the cuffs were refastened around her wrists. "They didn't hurt me."

"What happened?" Ellen asked shortly, leaning forward a little as the demon left the truck and zipped the flap.

"He just talked," Alex said. She looked down at the floor, her brow wrinkling a little, her expression bewildered. "Didn't even ask me any questions, just kept talking about what a great world they were going to make once they had the tablets."

Ellen frowned. "For ten hours?"

"Is that all it was?" the younger woman said, lifting her hand carefully and rubbing the heel over her temple. "It felt like a lot longer than that."

The engine of the truck started, vibrating through the floor and into their feet. "Listen, both of you," Ellen said, glancing at the back flap as the truck lurched forward. "These cuffs are just standard issue, nothing to them."

She let the cuffs drop. "Hold out your hands."

Kim and Alex leaned forward, extending their hands to her, and she slipped the reconfigured bobby pin from her sleeve and began to work on them. "What else did he say, Alex? Did he say where he was going to trade with Dean?"

"He said the army was expendable," Alex told her, brows drawing together as she tried to remember the details of the conversation. "I think he said Ottumwa. Is that right? Iowa? I thought they came through Missouri?"

"The demons said something about Cleveland," Ellen said, huffing a strand of hair back from her face as she twisted the wire in the cuff lock. "Iowa would fit if they're angling north. What did he mean, expendable?"

"I don't know," the younger woman said, exhaling. "A lot of it just seemed to be rambling, as if he wasn't talking to me, but to himself."

"Did you get the impression he wasn't as together as he seemed before?"

"Sometimes, yeah." She looked away. "He was vaguing out, from time to time – would stop talking and just stand there."

The lock sprang free and Ellen turned to the other one. "We've got a couple of hours at most. I don't know if they're going to make regular stops or not, but we have to go while we're moving."

"Ellen, that's a risk for you and Alex," Kim said sharply.

"It's a risk we have to take," Alex said immediately. "Without us, the Grigori have no bargaining power."

"I think we're on the 14," Ellen said. "Not far out of Hastings. It's about forty miles back to Lebanon. But the further we go, the harder it'll be to get back, and the more likely they are to find us before we can."

"You want us to jump out of a moving truck?"

"Yeah," Ellen said, glancing up at her with a grin. "And preferably before we hit the interstate." She eased the pin and felt it catch the mechanism, the click almost inaudible above the roar of the engine. "There's a section of this road where the bank drops away, and ends up in a forest."

"We came this way to Michigan last time," Alex said, nodding as she remembered the road, rubbing the marks on her wrists.

"We'll go there," Ellen confirmed, working on Kim's cuffs. "There's a bend before it, the headlights of the truck behind us will be off the truck for at least a few minutes. That's the window we have."

"How soon?" Kim asked, lifting her free hand to the bruising on her face as Ellen worked on the last shackle.

"Less than fifteen minutes."

* * *

"Can you see if they're walking behind us?" Alex said in a low voice, crouching beside Ellen at the back of the truck.

Ellen shook her head. "They lost most of the force they brought," she said. "Everyone's riding now, that's why we're moving fast."

If there had been demons walking alongside the trucks, escaping like this would've been impossible. But with the bend and the darkness and the hillside, she thought it might work. Always provided they didn't run into tigers, her mind threw at her. She repressed a shudder and pushed the thought aside.

"Alright, it's just up ahead," she told Alex, glancing past her to Kim. "You ready?"

The doctor made a face. "As I'll ever be."

The truck took the turn slowly, and Ellen watched as the headlights from the vehicle behind them shifted from the back and played over the hillside on the other side of the road as it followed. She forced the canvas up and slipped out.

They weren't going fast, but the road surface was unforgiving and her knees and ankles took the brunt of the impact, as she forced the roll across the shoulder, feeling the ground drop away from underneath her at the edge. Steeper than she'd thought, rolling down across the dried up and flattened grass, rocks and low bushes, one arm curled protectively over her head, the other around her stomach.

There was shouting from the top of the road, and the sound of gunfire, and she scrambled into a low crouch as the slope began to even out, running doubled-over for the shelter of the woods that had grown up the valley's sides. She stopped behind a tree trunk and dug into the flattened leaf fall on the ground under it.

Voices. Lights. She heard the thump of feet on the ground distantly and lifted her head slightly, looking frantically around, pushing backwards down the slight incline to get deeper under the trees. The hole was all black when it caught her peripheral vision and she stopped, focussing on it suddenly. Fox den. The thought came whole to her. The opening was quite large.

Above her on the steeper slope she could hear the demons pushing through the undergrowth and she launched herself into the hole, wriggling as it closed around her further in, smelling dry earth and nothing else, hoping it meant the den had been abandoned. The narrow tunnel opened up again a little after a few feet and she wormed her way faster along the soft earth, freezing as she heard muffled voices much closer.

She couldn't turn to see behind her, unsure now if there'd been enough bends to hide her feet from anyone pointing a light into the hole. For a man, it was far too small, she thought, and her pursuers might not realise that she could fit into it, a part of her aware that she was clutching at any hope at all.

No light penetrated the darkness she lay in, her breathing shallow and silent. Ellen lay there for a long time, unwilling to move in case they were waiting, just outside, waiting for her to move or come out.

* * *

_**West Keep, Kansas**_

Rufus watched the crane cable rising, lifting the block of concrete with it, his heart racing as he waited to see if anything else was going to fall on the man lying under it.

He had no idea how Singer could've managed to get so much of the fucking tower to fall directly on top of him, but if they got him in one piece and still breathing, he intended to make the sonofabitch pay for the scare.

The casualty figures for the two days of fighting hadn't been high on their end. He'd seen Merrin when the army had left and most of the wounded would survive. That'd made him doubly furious when Mel's call about Bobby had come in.

"Alright," Joseph yelled, waving an arm at the two stretcher bearers. "Gimme five minutes then come in – carefully!"

The ex-paramedic picked his way through the rubble and crouched beside Bobby, face expressionless and hands moving gently over the old man's body, his thumbs-up easily visible less than five minutes later. Rufus let out his breath in a long, whistling exhale and walked across what was left of the keep's bailey.

"How long to rebuild this?" he asked Liev, the builder looking up at the still-standing walls.

"Oh, a month or two, if we can get the materials, and the people," the swarthy builder told him. "I'm pretty amazed this much is still there," he added, pointing at the join in the walls that were blackened and scorched. "Tower took a direct hit from something pretty big."

Rufus nodded sourly. All of the destruction of their food and shelter had just been a diversion. Crowley had known about most of the defences and sent his demons in anyway, to make enough noise and confusion that they could slip the cambion in without them being questioned. It would take months to rebuild the order's safehold, and he was just grateful that they hadn't decided to burn the library while they'd been in there. They'd lost Davis and Aaron in the fighting, along with five of Franklin's soldiers. Adam, Marla and Jerome were all critical and of course Kim had been taken. He wondered vaguely if they'd thought she was their only doctor.

Turning at the heavy crunch of boots behind him, he saw the two men carrying Bobby over the rubble and to the truck, easing the injured man inside. He hurried to the rear, nodding at Lee and Perry as they walked around to the front of the truck and waited for Joseph to climb in first, following him and sitting near Bobby's head.

"He gonna be alright?" he asked the young man tersely.

Joseph looked at him and nodded. "Bruised, broken ankle, cracked ribs. He'll be okay." He looked down at his patient. "He's unconscious at the moment, just exhaustion, I think."

Unconscious was alright, Rufus thought. Unconscious would put off the moment when he had to tell his friend that Ellen had been taken.

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Kansas**_

Jasper looked at the mess and sighed deeply. Oliver and Frances had been working for the last twelve hours, clearing away what had been broken or destroyed beyond repair, helping Deirdre and Mitch to put the comms and computers back online, to get the documents that had been collateral damage of the shooting sorted from the rest and put downstairs for the restoration work that would take months, if it could even be done.

He hadn't liked the pompous professor but he would miss him, he thought tiredly. And Aaron, Jerome's assistant. The place seemed almost unbearably empty, just the four of them now rattling in it on their own. It also, he thought sourly, seemed horribly naked, vulnerable with the illusions and the door with its massive locking rings completely gone. How easy would it be to replace those, he wondered?

"We have a communiqué from France," Deidre said, looking over her shoulder at him. "Do you know Jerome's status?"

Status, Jasper wondered? Was the woman so utterly immersed in her technology that she related everything to working or not working?

"He's still in critical condition," he told her, a slight edge to his voice. He saw that she picked up on it, her eyes brightening fractionally, and sighed inwardly. People dealt with their shock and grief in their own ways, he rebuked himself. It wasn't his place to judge her for how she expressed that grief. "Bob was pretty certain he'll pull through but we won't be able to talk to him for a few more days," he added, more gently. Jerome had remained conscious until he'd given the cambion's message. The bullet had taken a chunk of liver and colon on its way through the professor's body.

"It's on the printer," she said, sitting down and typing in a progress update to the other chapters.

He walked across and picked it up, scanning over it. The Qaddiysh had managed to get through to Illinois. His brows shot up as he read that they'd found Dean and Sam Winchester along the way. Reaching for the phone on the desk beside him, he dialled the single digit that connected him to the exchange and the two digits that accessed the keep. The phone rang six times before it was picked up.

"West Keep," the soft female voice said.

"Maria?" Jasper asked.

"Yes."

"It's Jasper, is Rufus there?"

"Not right now, he's gone to Lightning Oak."

"What about Maurice?" Jasper frowned, belatedly remembering the news about Singer.

"Yes, hold on, I'll get him for you," she said.

"Just pass –" he stopped as he heard the clunk of the handset being dropped at the other end of the line. A few minutes later it was picked up and he heard the hunter's warm tenor at the other end.

"Jasper?"

"Yeah, we got a message from Michel," Jasper said, looking down at it. "The Qaddiysh are in Missouri. They found Dean and Sam in Illinois."

"Good," Maurice said, relief obvious in his voice. "How soon will they be here?"

"They've got a vehicle," he said, thinking about the route. "The army cleared the 70 when they came through. Perhaps a few hours?"

"Alright, thanks."

Behind the relief was trepidation, and Jasper put the phone down, running a hand over his head as he thought about the news that would be waiting for the leader and his brother. He was glad he didn't have to deliver it.

* * *

_**Red Cloud, Nebraska**_

The bridge was still there. It was a relief to see it as she looked at the turgid flow of the snow-melt. The curving metal frames were flaking paint in sheets, rust dark and growing beneath it, but still intact.

She pushed her hair back from her face, ignoring the stinging cuts and started to cross. Only another twenty miles from here, Ellen thought tiredly.

She'd waited over an hour before easing herself back out of the fox's den on the other side of Hastings. The trucks had long gone but she didn't trust the road and had followed the stream west until she'd reached the outskirts of what had been Hastings. From there, she thought it was safe enough to follow the highway south. Hearing the wolf music in the hills, she'd debated finding a place to hole up, and rest until dawn, but the urgency to keep moving had kept her on her feet, the bright moonlight flooding over the cracked road in front of her almost as strongly as day.

From memory the road would lead her straight home. Rufus and Bobby could organise a pursuit team, to watch the army, if nothing else, while they tried to figure out where to look for Dean and Sam. And if they're dead, she asked herself bleakly? Trapped or killed by the archangel they'd gone to help Cas contain?

She shook her head, trudging between the spans, the hard soles of her boots clocking on the concrete. It was impossible to imagine that either could be killed. Against her better judgement, she'd offered them help when she'd realised whose boys they were. Against her better judgement, she'd put herself and the people she knew into danger by continuing to try to help them. The memory of a young man, sitting on the edge of the table in the bar, his face stony with grief, came back to her. Even then, she'd wanted to help him because she'd had the strong sense that fate – or destiny – or whatever you called it – had held those young men deep in its machinations, and they'd needed all the help they could get. She didn't regret that her choices had killed many of her friends. She still didn't know if the spur-of-the-moment decision to restock the pretzels had been chance or her own fate playing out as it was meant.

Bobby had given her Jim's journal, when they'd moved from Michigan to Kansas. In it had been the truth of what had happened down in Devil's Gate Reservoir, the gate Bill and John had gone to investigate. The pain from those truths had been immense, not just what she'd learned about her husband and his death, but the injustice she'd done to John, the hatred that driven her for so many years. She'd come to understand why John had taken the blame, why he'd lied to her about what had happened, but she didn't know if she'd ever forgive him for that.

She could help his sons. That was all that was left to do. Help them to do the jobs that fate seemed to be putting in front of them. She could add her shield to those that had gathered around them. They weren't dead, she knew with a spearing jab of clarity. Death wouldn't have allowed it. They'd been removed from the scene deliberately because the threads hadn't yet played out, but they weren't dead.

Looking up, she saw the road stretching out ahead, gently rising and falling over the low hills that surrounded her. A glance back showed the bridge more than a half a mile behind her. The sky was getting lighter, silver streaks slowly spreading from behind the eastern horizon. If she picked up her pace, she could be home by midday.

* * *

_**West Keep, Kansas**_

Sam sucked in his breath as he saw the black smoke rising in the distance. Beside him, he felt his brother tense.

The wide car bounced over the fields when Dean had to leave the road, craters and piles of earth and concrete and asphalt littered over it where the mines had gone off. He followed the deep tracks of the army vehicles around the half-burned woods and over the trampled pastures and ploughed fields, slowing but not stopping as they passed the broken fort, its blackened stones tumbled across the scorched earth.

As the land rose, they saw the shattered and smoking remains of the keep to the north-east, and the bodies of the dead, piled and burning, around the standing buildings. Sam's gaze swivelled west, eyes widening as he saw the gaping holes in the massive curtain walls that surrounded the town – what had been a town and had been rebuilt into a fortress.

A group of men in the churned up mud of the fields of Ghost Valley looked at the car as it approached them, rifle barrels rising in unison as they came closer. Dean felt a flush of relief sweep through him as he recognised Jackson's grizzled face under the soot and dirt.

"Missed all the fun," the farmer said to him when he stopped, gesturing around vaguely. Dean looked at the pyre.

"How many we'd lose?"

"Not many," Riley said, stepping close behind Jackson, his face equally grimy with the unpleasant task. "These are from the other side."

"Keeps got hit pretty solidly," Jackson told him, his faded blue eyes narrowed as he looked into the car, his gaze flicking around the faces watching him. "But it was just a diversion."

Dean nodded. He knew that. They'd only come for the prophet and the tablet. He didn't know how to ask what he needed to know.

"You get any reports from the keep or the order?"

Both men dropped their gazes, and he felt his heart sink.

"They got Chuck," Jackson said carefully, looking at the ground. "And they took some hostages."

"We lose much of the stores?" Dean asked, looking past them at the fields. He'd known it for the last four days, known they would be too late, known it was the only reason to get them out of the town. It was taking everything he had to keep his imagination under control. "Stock?"

"No, not much," Riley said, his face drawn beneath the muck covering it. "We'll be able to clean up."

"I'll see you later."

They nodded and stepped back as he drove past them, over the field to the small road that led into the town.

"Crowley'll make a trade," Sam said, bracing his hand against the roof above him as the car bounced over the bank. "He only wants the tablet and the gun back."

Dean didn't respond, his gaze fixed on the broken battlements that had come into view as the humvee growled in low range along the road.

* * *

The small group of offices that had been turned over to the hunters living in the keep were virtually undamaged. All of them were there now, sitting wherever there was a space, the dust cleared out and a fire burning on the hearth as they listened to Ellen.

"Expendable?" Dean repeated slowly. "That was what she said?"

Ellen nodded, chewing and swallowing the rich stew in between questions.

Looking around at the faces in the room, his gaze flicking back to his brother every few minutes, Sam saw nothing but cold resolve in them. Everyone there was experienced. They had all earned the right to be here, putting their nickel's worth of opinion into the plans that were being formulated. Only someone who knew his brother very, very well could've picked the underlying tension that hummed in him.

"Did she see Crowley?"

"I don't think so," Ellen said, pushing the clean bowl away and sitting back in the chair, brows drawing together as she thought about the brief conversation. "She said that the Grigori was rambling, as if he was talking to himself, not to her."

"Losing it?" Rufus asked.

Ellen shrugged. "Maybe."

"We should be so lucky," Bobby growled, unable to scratch the itch under his cast that had been driving him nuts all afternoon. His relief, when Ellen had walked down the road to the outer towers and been brought into town with the guards, had just about given him a coronary. He didn't think he could deal with that kind of scare again. And the emotions had centred on the half-inch square of skin, just above the bone and four inches from the edge of the cast, that itched unbearably.

"They want to do the trade in Iowa," Nate said thoughtfully, turning to look at Dean. "Why?"

"Too far for us to hit them and take it all back?" Sam suggested diffidently. He'd been wondering about the location as well. It was too far for them to mobilise sufficient people to get there; against the fallen and the half-breeds, they needed weapons and a strategy that wouldn't get them all killed. But the sense that there was something else persisted as well.

"Maybe," Dean said, his eyes dark and studying the floor at his feet. "Doesn't matter. We'll go in five hours – me and Sam, Elias, Rufus and Win," he decided. "Everyone else is on clean up here and rebuilding."

There was a general movement as the hunters who weren't going got up and finished their drinks, making their way out and back to their responsibilities. Win got up and Elias caught her arm, drawing her back down to the chair she'd been sitting in again.

Dean looked at Rufus. "How many were left?"

Rufus raised his brows at Ellen. "We got a body count here of about nineteen hundred," he said. From the side of the desk, Ellen nodded in agreement.

"I thought they had maybe a hundred and fifty, two hundred left at most."

"That's too many for a direct attack," Bobby pointed out, pouring another inch of whiskey into his glass.

"Yeah," Dean agreed absently. "What about their vehicles? When they stopped, did they make a camp, or just pull off the road in a line?"

"In a line," Ellen remembered. "I don't think they expected to be stopped that long."

She saw an expression flash over his face, there and gone before she could identify it. The army had stopped for Baeder, she thought belatedly. For Baeder to talk to Alex. It made no sense, unless Crowley had other reasons to call a halt. She hadn't seen any signs of it.

"Who's the best long-range shooter we got?" Dean asked Rufus and Bobby, gaze cutting between them.

"Besides you?" Rufus glanced at Bobby, one brow lifted. "Toby."

Bobby nodded. "Did two tours in Afghanistan before they let him out."

"Win, could you tell Toby to come back?" Ellen looked at the slim, wiry girl. She nodded and left the room.

"What do you want to do?" Elias asked Dean, leaning forward slightly.

"They'll expect me to come with backup," Dean said slowly. "That'll be Sam, you and Rufus. Toby and Win can hang back, as far as needs be to get the shot. Franklin did up some of his specials on the ammo we use in the M40, we'll take that."

"It won't work on the fallen or the half-breeds," Sam said quizzically.

"No, but it'll keep Crowley in his meatsuit, and keep him from zapping off somewhere. He'll want the tablet and the gun to be in his hands," Dean said, rubbing a hand along his jaw. "The big half-breed, his job seems to be protecting the Grigori."

He shrugged and stood up, walking distractedly to the fire. "I think the plan is to get them and then abandon ship – take Chuck and the tablet, the fallen and the half-breeds and leave everyone else there."

"You want to stop Crowley from leaving?"

"Even if Baeder or Dietrich take the tablet, they're not interested in the Colt," Dean said, turning around to look at them. "And Crowley is. And that gun can kill them all."

He didn't have to say that if he'd been there, nothing would have stopped him from using the gun. Every hunter in the town had realised that if they'd pulled the damned thing out instead of hiding it, they could've stopped the half-breeds, the nephilim and gone out hunting the Grigori and the King of Hell as well. It'd dawned on Rufus much later that'd been Dean's plan all along.

Sam looked up as the awkward silence was broken with Win returning with Toby. Dean nodded to the hunter.

"Need your shooter's skills," he said, and Toby sat down, taking the whiskey that Ellen offered him.

"Range?"

"Likely to be outside a mile."

"No problem, depending on other factors," Toby said, smiling slightly at him as he swallowed the whiskey and set the glass down. "But you know that."

Dean nodded. "Win'll spot for you."

"Okay," he said, giving her a smile. She looked back at him coolly.

"We can be compromised here," Dean added, glancing at Sam. "If there's a problem, you stand down, no arguments."

Toby looked back at him. "Sure."

"Okay, we're leaving in four hours. Two cars. The roads are crap so pick something that can handle them."

Toby and Win got up and walked out, Elias finishing his glass and putting it on the table as he got up as well.

"Toby takes out Crowley and …?" Ellen asked, leaning her chin against the palm of her hand.

"His gun takes a .50 calibre round," Dean said shortly. "One to immobilise Crowley. And one of those through the half-breed's head'll knock him down. I get the Colt back and put everyone else down."

He got up and shrugged. "Depending on the situation."

"Dean –" Rufus started. Dean walked to the door, cutting him off as he turned back.

"Get your gear together and get some rest, we won't be stopping once we're on the road," he told Rufus and Elias sharply then walked out.

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Kansas**_

Penemue looked around the room curiously. It was laid out in a similar manner to the French safehold. He turned as Jasper came down the stairs. The old man glanced at the _Irin_, close-cropped and thinning silver hair framing a rounded face, the razor intelligence visible in pale blue eyes contrasting sharply with an amiable smile. He wasn't a legacy, he'd told them on their arrival, merely a professor of dead languages. The man who'd died, Cutler Davis, hadn't been a legacy either, nor the short, plump woman who had looked them over the previous evening with equal parts suspicion and astonishment.

"Jerome is still unconscious," Jasper said abruptly.

"You were lucky," Shamsiel remarked, looking around. "I am surprised they didn't wipe you out entirely."

Baraquiel shot him a quelling look and Jasper smiled. "I am also surprised they didn't," he told them. "Particularly when the nephilim could not find the tablet. Nothing we had touched them."

"No," Penemue agreed. "We do have something that will 'touch' them, but still, the heart must be removed."

He saw Jasper's gaze slide away to look at the box that sat on the table.

"That's it then?" the scholar asked, walking slowly to the table. "Pandora's Box."

"Yes," Baraquiel said, following him. "The French order had a means of following the energy of the goddesses – have you been able to replicate that device here?"

He looked down at the situation table, at the clusters of red and yellow and blue lights that were static or moving over the map.

"No as precisely as Michel," Jasper said distractedly, staring at the box. "Deirdre and Mitch are working on that now." He looked up. "We are running to several different priorities here at the moment."

"We understand." Penemue nodded. "The closing of the gates will reduce the danger of both Hell and the Grigori."

"The closing of the gates is essential to prevent the archdemons from gaining control," another voice said from the library steps and the _Irin_ turned around.

"Ah, this is Father McConnaughey," Jasper said, as the priest walked down the steps. "Father, this is Penemue, Baraquiel and Shamsiel."

"Interesting times indeed to meet the sons of God who fell with their Grace," Father McConnaughey said, bowing his head slightly to the Qaddiysh. "I was given a message."

Baraquiel exchanged a look with his brothers. "From an angel?"

"Yes," the priest said. "I believe it was an angel. I was told that the gates must be closed before Crowley could make any other alliances, before the Fallen could escape their bonds."

Shamsiel lifted a brow. "Anything else?"

"I was told that the Winchesters would be the ones to close the gates," Father McConnaughey told him. "One of them, at any rate."

"Which one?" Baraquiel asked.

"I don't know," the priest said bluntly, looking at him. "We have assumed it would be Dean."

He watched the fallen angels exchange a look. "Do you have further information about that?"

Penemue shook his head. "No, nothing that is fixed."

"My colleague, Father Emilio, believes it will be Sam," Father McConnaughey said, and he saw that the Qaddiysh were aware that he was fishing, their expressions carefully neutral.

"It could be," Shamsiel agreed mildly. "The instructions were, as I recall, rather open to interpretation."

Jasper hid a smile as he saw Father McConnaughey's face twitch.

"The instructions are so vague as to be practically useless," the priest snapped at the angel. "And our prophet is gone."

"Did you get the details of the trials?" Penemue asked curiously.

"The first two, we have the most basic idea," Jasper interceded smoothly. "Enough to attempt them. We don't have any details on what the actual contract with God is, and the wording is rather ominous."

"The ordeals will test '_unto death_', according to the tablet," Father McConnaughey confirmed sourly. "Not a great incentive to take them on."

"Contracts with God have always tested faith, Father," Shamsiel said, a faint touch of rebuke in his tone. "You should know that."

"Faith is difficult to maintain in the situations that Heaven have brought down upon us," the priest argued. "Even for those who have lived by it their entire lives."

"It is in the times of utmost despair that faith is most important," Baraquiel said quietly. "No matter what Heaven is doing – or Hell – or anything else that walks the world in darkness, Father, it will be faith – in our Father, in each other and in ourselves that overcomes."

The priest turned away, muttering something under his breath.

"Didn't catch that, Father," Jasper said brightly, flicking a glance at the Qaddiysh.

Father McConnaughey turned and scowled at him. "I was merely asking myself if these gentlemen have met the Winchesters." He turned back to look at Baraquiel. "It is their skills and knowledge and their own courage they look to, not faith in a power that has deceived them from before they were born!"

* * *

_**US-34 E, Nebraska**_

The black car sped along the roads, the headlights barely visible as dawn greeted it, powering into the growing light and throwing a long, lilac shadow onto the asphalt behind it.

Dean manoeuvred the car around the worst of the holes and cracks without thought or effort, the occasional glance in the mirror showing Toby behind him, mimicking the Impala's movements and maintaining a steady four car-lengths back in the green SUV. He'd decided to leave Rufus behind at the last minute, unwilling to risk a man who could protect the population effectively, and a friend who'd already risked his life several times in following him.

Behind the layer of rigid control he was holding onto, fear and rage and memory and speculation were lapping and surging at the walls, the tension between feeling and thought, and the tight grip he had over himself manifesting in aching muscles and a white-knuckled stranglehold on the wheel. He was going to burn out before he got there, he thought caustically, looking down at his hands and deliberately flexing them again.

He would kill Crowley. And the Grigori. And the half-breeds. For a fractional second, the images were so powerful, so vivid in his mind's eye – the blue fire of Colt's bullets penetrating and immolating their bodies – that he felt a frisson of release from the iron bands compressing his chest, as if it were already done. He shook the feeling off impatiently.

A lot would depend on the situation, he told himself savagely. And his ability to react with it. Opportunities would be there, that he was sure of. They always were if you knew how to look for them. But what form they'd take, how easy they'd be to see and use, that was the difference in the life between those who reached thirty, and those who didn't.

The other two men in the car were silent, sometimes lost in their own thoughts, but sometimes, he knew, wondering about him. Sam knew him well enough to not even attempt a conversation, keeping his concerns locked away. He could feel Elias' gaze on him from time to time, the hunter watching him but not offering anything. He couldn't go near the thoughts he'd bottled up and sealed away since he'd seen the black smoke rising above Lebanon. Couldn't afford to lose the hard, cold edge that would get him through the next few hours. Couldn't let himself think or feel anything that wasn't a hundred percent focussed on what he was going to do.

Most of the signs that had been present along the roads had fallen or been cannibalised for other uses. He knew this stretch of highway, well enough to know that Creston was coming up. The half-breed had told Jerome the trade would be in Iowa, and Alex had Ellen that the Grigori had mentioned Ottumwa.

He slowed as the bend came up, indicating and watching Toby in the mirrors as he pulled over. The SUV pulled up alongside his window.

"We didn't get a specific location for the trade," Dean said, window down as he looked across to Toby. "I think he's gonna use the railway crossing, about two miles this side of the town."

In the other vehicle, Toby nodded. "Elevated and clear view all around."

"Used to be fairly clear," Dean corrected him. "To the north-east of the tracks, there's a hill, had some woods on it last time I went through there, probably a lot more now."

"Think they'll post guards?"

"Yeah, definitely," Dean said. "But not past a few hundred yards. You take the back way in, through what used to be farmland to the north, the highest part of that hill is near a gravel road north of the 34."

"I know the place you mean," Winifred said, turning to Toby. "It's thick woods there now, but the line of sight is straight down to the overpass."

"Right," Dean confirmed. "We'll give you an hour to get into position then we'll be coming through."

"If they're not there?" Toby asked, scratching an eyebrow.

"They'll be there," Dean said, his certainty growing as he thought about it. The town itself would be ruins, too many places for ambushes if Crowley thought he was bringing more people. The railway line would force a one-on-one meeting, down the embankments and on the open ground of the tracks. He might or might not think of a sniper, knowing that he couldn't be killed with one of their bullets and the range would be too great for Colt, even in plain view.

"Alright," Toby agreed readily. "Who do you want first?"

"Crowley," Dean told him. "Head shot if you can. I need him immobilised. Then the half-breed. The others can't just up and disappear without them."

The green car moved slowly out past him, heading north at the next turn. Dean watched them go, his fingers drumming restlessly on the wheel as he dragged up every detail he could remember of the overpass before the town. It'd been wooded, and there was a small river running alongside the tracks, he remembered. He thought that Crowley would use the iron tracks as a half-way point. He wondered briefly who they'd send down to get the tablet. The half-breed, more than likely. The others would remain at the top.

* * *

_**Ottumwa, Iowa**_

He came around the bend in the road and saw them, on the other side of the concrete span that carried the road over the railway line; trucks and the demon-possessed soldiers and the unmistakable figures of the fallen. Slowing, he pulled in on the shoulder a few yards before the asphalt joined the concrete.

"You ready?" Sam asked, looking at his brother's profile. Dean didn't answer, turning off the engine and getting out of the car, and Sam sighed, opening his door and following. The rear door clunked shut as Elias got out and looked over the roof of the car at Dean.

"Down at the tracks," a demon called out from the other end of the span. Dean nodded, turning to get around the low concrete wall that bordered the edge.

The embankment wasn't long or particularly steep and the three men hit the flattened ground divided in half by the metal tracks in a couple of minutes, watching the opposite bank as Crowley and the Grigori walked down from the road and stopped along the top.

They should be good, clean targets up there, Dean thought distantly. His stomach knotted as a tall young woman pushed Alex and Kim down from the highway, the two women stumbling and blinking in the bright light, hands bound behind them. They looked unhurt, he told himself.

Crowley glanced at them and back down to the tracks. "Alright, you can see they're in good health. Where's the tablet and the gun?"

"Send them down first," Dean called back, his fingers itching for the Colt's grip. "When they're safe, you'll get them."

"No," the man standing behind Alex said, shaking his head. "No, Mr Winchester, we will send them down to you when the tablet and gun is on its way back here." He turned, gesturing and Dean saw the half-breed step out from behind Crowley, his face expressionless as he looked down the hill.

"Mr Draxler here will take the tablet and the gun," the Grigori said loudly. "When he is a reasonable distance from you, the women will be freed."

"Not going to happen," Dean said shortly, folding his arms over his chest as he looked up.

He saw the man draw a gun from his belt, holding the barrel against Alex's temple as he gripped her bound wrists with the other. Crowley glanced across at the concrete parapet that lined the overpass, the sound of rifles cocking loud in the still air.

"On the contrary, Mr Winchester," the Grigori said. "This is exactly how it will happen, or this woman will die in the next thirty seconds and you will be mown down by our shooters. And we will take the stone and gun from your dead body."

Dean looked at him for a moment, then nodded. They were, at least, predictable he thought, letting his shoulders slump. It was the least he could do to be seen as predictable as well. He watched the half-breed continue down the slope toward them, skirting the brown and withered-looking clumps of dead grass and low bushes that speckled the incline.

The headshot would take Crowley as the half-breed began the climb back up, he thought, looking at the ground and listening to the cambion's descent. The second shot would hopefully put Draxler down long enough for him to get across the tracks and to him, get the Colt and start shooting. He was hoping Toby would see the other targets and keep firing. They hadn't been able to plan out anything further without knowing how the situation would be.

Pulling the gun from his belt and the tablet from his jacket pocket, he waited, the seconds ticking off in his head.

He looked up as Draxler stopped in front of him. An inch or two shorter, the cambion made up for it in breadth of shoulder and the hard, heavy muscle that was evident even under the loose combat jacket and pants. Looking into his face, he saw that the half-breed hadn't forgotten their last encounter, and wouldn't make the same mistakes again. His eyes narrowed as a flickering expression lit the dark eyes for a moment as he handed the gun and stone to the man. He couldn't be sure, it'd been too quick, but it'd looked something like an apology. Draxler was turning away, long strides taking him across the iron tracks, to the beginning of the upward rise of the embankment.

The flat crack of the rifle was too far away to hear, and the hole appeared to one side of Crowley's forehead as if by magic, the impact knocking him to the ground. Dean was sprinting for the half-breed as a second shot hit Draxler in the side of the chest, sending him sprawling against the slope.

Sam and Elias both turned, drawing the short-barrelled sub-machine guns from beneath their coats, strafing the concrete overpass with automatic fire as they bolted under its cover.

On the top of the embankment, Baeder looked at Jesse and nodded and the little boy disappeared abruptly. He watched the eldest Winchester reach the cambion and laughed, the shrill, raw cackle echoing down the narrow ravine.

Sam's head snapped up to see the Grigori silhouetted against the overcast sky, head thrown back as that laugh broke through the sudden silence.

Dean dropped onto Draxler's back, hearing the whoof of the man's chest compress under him, air driven out and his grip on the Colt loosening. He was reaching for the gun when the two gunshots rang out, one after the other with barely a second between them. He looked up, time slowing down as he watched the men push Alex and Kim toward the edge, telescoping out as he watched them fall, seconds drawing out to minutes, then hours as he saw them tumble headfirst down the slope, rolling bonelessly to the bottom.

Draxler twisted around. The boy appeared next to him, touching his wrist and the cambion disappeared from under Dean as he staggered to his feet, the Colt forgotten. He was running, something booming in his ears, something shuddering in his chest, something screaming in his head.

Elias watched Dean reach them and drop to his knees. He looked back up, seeing Crowley rise, the Grigori and the cambion close up together and vanish, seeing the demon-possessed remnants of the army slowly realise they'd been abandoned, backing away from the overpass, turning and running.

Staring at his brother, Sam remembered Chuck's vision … _and the whole world seemed to hold its breath in the silence that filled the narrow ravine_. The silence was there, too loud against his ears, too thickly surrounding the man kneeling next to the bodies of the women.

Walking across the heavy gravel bed of the railway, he saw the blood stain as Dean lifted Alex, spreading out from the hole in her back, coating his brother's hands and seeping into his sleeves. On the ground next to him, Kim's face was slack, her eyes open and unseeing, and he knew a similar stain would be spreading out under her as well.

Dean shifted his grip as Alex's head fell back, her eyes half-open but covered in dust, a long scratch from the roll down the hill open and almost bloodless along her cheek. His fingers pressed against the side of her neck, harder and harder as he tried to find the pulse that should've been there, ducking his head to feel for her breath along his cheek.

He heard footsteps behind him, recognised Sam's tread. "I can't find her pulse," he told Sam.

And as the words came out, their meaning became clear to him.

Against the walls of the control he'd been holding onto, something titanic shoved at him. _If you let go now, if you let that in, you won't get up again_. The thought flashed through his mind and he tipped his head back, mouth opening as he dragged in a deep breath. The dead weight in his arms caught at him and he lowered her body to the ground, turning away and closing his eyes, batting Sam's hand away from him as he got to his feet.

_You know what you have to do_.

He knew.

The walls held. The tumult receded and silence, frigidly cold, with fingers like razor blades, dropped over him, filled him up and pushed out everything else.

_Dead inside_.

Maybe Famine had been right all along, he thought disinterestedly. Maybe Death had been right too. It didn't matter now. There was a job to do. A demon to kill. The thoughts were tasteless and dry in his mind, no emotion attached to them, no feeling flickering as he stared at the scrubby slope in front of him and considered how he would do that.

"Dean?"

He looked around at his brother's voice. "Yeah?"

"We need to make a pyre," Sam said softly, gesturing vaguely behind him.

"Right."

"Dean …"

His eyes narrowed a little as he focussed on Sam's face, seeing the pain in the hazel eyes, in the lines that bracketed his little brother's mouth. He knew what Sam wanted to know.

"I'm fine, Sam," he said briskly. "Build the pyre, I need to check on Toby and Win."

He started to climb the embankment before his brother could respond, feeling the pull and stretch of the muscles in legs and back, concentrating on that visceral sensation as he reached the top and looked at the black car. There was another road that led to the hill less than five hundred back behind the bend, he thought distantly. He could use that.

At the tracks, Elias walked to Sam and laid a restraining hand on his arm. "Leave him, let him deal however he has to."

"He doesn't deal," Sam said worriedly. "That's the problem."

Elias followed his gaze as they both heard the engine start. "He'll have to eventually, but that's up to him, not us," he said quietly. "We've got a job here, Sam. Let's get on with it."

* * *

Dean got out of the car and walked along the narrow trail that led into the woodland and curved up to the summit of the low hill. He could smell burning and he rubbed a hand over his face, disoriented slightly by the smell and his brother's conversation. He wouldn't be able to smell the pyre from a mile away, even if the wind was blowing in this direction, which it was not.

Coming into the small space the hunters had chosen, he looked down at the charred ground disbelievingly.

_The boy._

The conversation with Jasper came back to him and he remembered seeing the boy appear next to Draxler, seeing him touch the man and disappear them both right from under him.

The boy was cambion too.

Young. _Extraordinary power_.

It explained the attack on the keep and how they'd gotten Chuck from the spell circle. Aside from the stones, nothing they'd found could affect the half-demon, half-human monsters.

He heard a low groan and spun around, finding Win lying several yards from the clearing, her clothing burned off half her body, the skin beneath weeping and blistered, her eyes rolling in agony as she tried to drag herself through the trees.

"Win," Dean said tightly, moving around her and putting a hand on her unburned side. "It's Dean."

"Boy," she said indistinctly, the skin pulling back from the corner of her mouth.

"I know," he told her. "Hold still, I'm gonna pick you up."

Another moan and he saw the fear in her eyes.

"Okay, just stay here," he said, looking over her quickly. They had a good medical kit in the car, he could cover the burns before he tried to move her at least. "Don't move. I'm coming back."

He straightened up and walked down through the woods to the car, unlocking the trunk and grabbing the kit and the thick blanket from above the well lid. He could hear his father's voice in his head. _Biggest danger with burns is infection. You cover them with sterilised gauze until you can get to a hospital. Put the vic out and irrigate with saline if they're already covered in crap. You remember this, Dean? Yessir_.

He did. He remembered all of it. Everything. He hurried back up the trail, the wash of relief disorienting when he saw she hadn't moved.

There were two shots of morphine in the kit, each one allowing about nine hours of unconsciousness. The stuff depressed respiration and it was hard to work out beforehand how much was too much.

"You allergic to anything?" he asked, pulling the cap off the needle and tapping the end.

"No." The word was barely a breathy exhale and he looked down at her. She would overload on the pain shortly and that would bring its own problems. He found a vein on the inside of her elbow and slid the needle in, depressing the plunger and giving her half the shot, washing the needle with a squirt of alcohol before recapping it.

Fingers pressed lightly against the pulse at the base of her throat, he looked at his watch, timing her heart beat and the in and outtake of breath as the drug took her deep.

When she was out, he sluiced the bottle of saline solution over every burn he could see, picking out the melted and charred bits of fabric that were all that remained of her clothing on that side, sluicing again until he was reasonably sure that nothing remained. He ripped the sterilised packs open and laid the gauze pads over the burns, winding open-weave bandages around them as lightly as possible, covering every inch. He opened the blanket and lifted her onto it, folding the edges over and easing his arms under her to take her weight.

* * *

Sam looked up as Dean came back down the slope, frowning as he saw the damp and bloody patches over his brother's shirt.

"What happened?"

"The boy, the cambion, got to Toby after the shot that hit Draxler," Dean said shortly, looking at the mound of branches and twigs that the men had built while he'd been gone. The sight brought nothing more than a careful appraisal. "Win wasn't targeted but she tried to save Toby."

"Where is she?"

"In the car."

"Out?"

Dean nodded. The bodies were wrapped in blankets, lying together on the top of the pyre. "Where'd you get the blankets?"

"Crowley's army took off, left a lot of their vehicles here," Elias said, walking up to them. "Guess that's what Baeder meant by expendable."

Sam cleared his throat and looked at Dean. "You, uh, want to –"

"No. Just get it lit," Dean told him brusquely. "We have to get Win back to the keep."

Elias nodded and turned back to the pyre, lighting a branch and thrusting it deep into the pyre. They'd emptied most of a can of gasoline over the wood and it went up with a rush of air and flame as the fumes caught.

The three hunters watched it burn. Sam's gaze slid sideways, seeing his brother motionless and hard, arms folded over his chest, his gaze fixed to the centre of the fire, his face expressionless. He couldn't see Dean's eyes, but he had the feeling there would be nothing in them, just the same cool appraisal with which he'd looked over the pyre, making sure the job was done right.

When the bodies were afire, Dean turned away and Elias shook his head at Sam, gesturing for him to follow his brother up the hill. The Impala was already facing west, and they got in, Sam watching the smoke rise behind them through the side-mirrors until the bends of the road and the distance hid them completely.

Dean took them back to the SUV up by the woodland where Toby had been killed. Elias got out without a word and climbed into the vehicle and the two cars retraced their path back to the highway as darkness settled in over the countryside, headlights on, silence filling both.

* * *

_**US-77 S, Nebraska**_

Sam watched the headlights on the black road ahead of them, the shadows of the humps and cracks obvious, Dean avoiding them in plenty of time. The car was filled with the soft roar of the tyres, the rattle of the heater, the breathing of the wounded woman on the rear seat. They hadn't said a word to each other since bypassing Omaha.

He'd seen this before.

It wasn't the same, he knew. Back then, in amongst the grief had been his father's final words, the last command for the obedient son. Dean'd told him that those words had been screaming in his head the whole time he'd kept them from him. He remembered being so angry that his brother hadn't told him sooner, that he'd completely missed the meaning of that confession, the doubled and then tripled impact of losing the father he'd loved, trying to accept what he'd been told, realising what his father had done to save him and where he was. With a hindsight that came much, much later, he'd realised how impossible it'd been for Dean to say anything, to let anything out over the months that had followed his miraculous recovery. He'd suffered the loss and the terror and the guilt alone for as long as he'd been able.

He'd been twenty-seven then. Now, the layers and walls and armour went much deeper, were much thicker. It didn't matter that he knew Dean had shut down and refused to go through the process he needed to recover. He'd never admit to it, and he wouldn't allow a discussion of it. Not now. The situation wasn't the same but the coping mechanism was still in place and he would handle it the same way.

Back then, their father's death had changed the dynamic between them. Not a huge amount, just enough so that Dean had come to see his entire life as a single job. Glancing at the stony profile to his left, Sam wondered if that would be the same as well. He could easily imagine the job his brother had signed himself up for now. The one that would give him a death that he wouldn't be ashamed of, the one that would let him think of dying as an honourable thing to do, even if his reasons for wanting that were not.

Running a hand impatiently through his hair, Sam turned back to the window beside him, the cool glass soothing against his temple. He remembered – in shocking, Technicolour detail – how it had been for him for the endless months after Jess' murder. All the details he'd gone over and over, wondering if anything he could've done would've made a difference. Back then, it had all seemed to him that he was the one who'd failed her, failed to see, failed to say, failed to stay with her and keep her safe. He knew now that it those details hadn't mattered at all. Brady would've killed her anyway, no matter what he'd done because that was the plan. The ultimate plan to build the key to the last seal of the Cage. Lucifer had delighted in sharing every detail of it with him.

Was that why Alex had been killed, he wondered? To force a course of action onto his brother? To take away the things that might've changed the path he was supposed to be on? Death had told him that he would close the gates of Hell and Heaven. But Cas had said that Dean had been changing the lines, changing the paths. Was the If statement still functioning?

When he'd gotten into the black car after a week of searching every square inch of Palo Alto, he had been unable to talk to his brother about any of it. The nightmares, the waking visions, the god-awful pain that had felt as if he'd ingested acid and it was eating its way through him. He'd taken a leaf out of his older brother's book and had bottled it up, swallowed it down and pretended he was fine. He hadn't been but he couldn't have stood to see the pity in Dean's eyes, couldn't have borne to talk about the relentless, unending agony of it. And he knew that Dean couldn't either. Not back then when John had dropped dead on the hospital floor, and not now with the memory of the gunshot and the hill and the half-open, dust-filled dead eyes staring up at him.

Elias'd been right, he acknowledged unwillingly. To force a confrontation, to open a crack in whatever armour his brother had built in that moment between trying to find a pulse and realising that he would never find one, that would only weaken him, only give him less to live for.

The window fogged as his breath hit the glass in a long, slow exhale.

* * *

_**Hidden Lake, Montana**_

The dark-haired woman knelt beside the clear waters of the lake and cupped her hands, filling them and drinking deeply of the ice-cold liquid, letting it spill down her chin and chest, tipping her head back to the sun and closing her eyes. The pull was very strong to the south. She opened her eyes and turned her head, her face hard and expressionless as she looked at the mountains that cupped the valley and lake. Many, many miles to the south. She felt hunger and madness as her child beat its fists against the rock that imprisoned it. They were all here in this vast land, she knew. She could feel a fainter pull to the east, uncertain if that was due to distance or to the strength of the prison. It wouldn't matter in the end. She would find them and break their cages, release them back to the world and the growing population her sister was creating. Life throbbed potently all around now, hers and the other's. They were made to create a balance between all things but it had always been a race, to see if one could out-make the other. This time, she thought contentedly, she would be the winner. Her children were faster, stronger and she had more time.

She wiped the last droplets from her face and got to her feet. The sun would set soon and she always walked faster at night.

In the burrows and dens, the setts and nests and tunnels, the animals shuddered in their sleep as she passed indifferently by, their dreams twisted and distorted, filled with primal fears and tastes and smells. Filled with copper and iron and the bitter taste of long-dead carrion.


	15. Chapter 15 When the Pale Moon Dreamed

**Chapter 15 When the Pale Moon Dreamed**

* * *

_**April, 2013. Boston, Massachusetts**_

Dimly lit. Dank with the ever-present whiff of the sea and the distant rumble of the waves beating against the cliffs. Low ceilings, the massive hardwood beams strung here and there with chains.

A dungeon.

Chuck looked around nervously. He was in an honest-to-god fucking dungeon.

"Sit down," the demon's voice said from behind him and he dragged his eyes from the stone-lined walls and back to the table under the single, bare lightbulb. "Sorry about the décor."

"I need paper," Chuck said, sitting down in the uncomfortable wooden straight-backed chair and looking at the stone on the table's surface. "I – my process – I'm a writer."

"Of course," Crowley said, his eyes rolling as he gestured sharply to the demon by the door. "I've read your work, some of it, at any rate."

"You have?" Chuck looked up, genuinely surprised.

Crowley heard the faintest trace of pride in the writer's voice and tucked his chin against his chest, eyes closing. "Yes, it was … well, a bit lurid here and there, but overall, very interesting."

"Uh … thanks." Chuck looked down at the table. "I didn't realise at the time that what I was seeing was actually happening, of course."

"No." Crowley took the pile of notebooks from the demon and set them beside the prophet. "We're on something of a time-table here, Chuck. So get to it."

Looking at the stone, Chuck reached for it hesitantly. He didn't know what happened, exactly, when he touched it. He knew he was no longer there. No longer himself. From the reams of paper and the cramping ache in his hand the last time he'd come out of the deep trance, he knew he'd worked non-stop. But it took days for the information that had passed through him to filter coherently into his mind, into his memories, and much of what he wrote under the spell of the stone he didn't remember at all.

The demon watched him pick up the tablet, saw his body contract, fingers gripping the stone tightly and a light flashing deep within it, arcing through the prophet's hand and arm and body. Chuck sat rigidly, eyes wide open and staring and his right hand began to move, filling the page of the notepad under it.

_Amazing_, Crowley thought. _A pipeline, straight to the Word of God_. The Machiavellian workings of the mastermind who'd thought it all up never failed to amuse him.

He turned to look at the demon beside the door. "Stay next to him, make sure he keeps going."

The demon nodded and walked to the table as Crowley headed for the staircase, drawing the door of the room closed behind him. The weight of the Colt and the box of bullets were tugging at his suit pocket and he hurried up the stairs and along the wide hall to his study, unlocking the door impatiently and pushing it open.

Moving behind the polished ebony desk that was identical to the less-than-material echo in the plane adjacent to this one, he unlocked and opened the cupboard beneath the return, lifting out the pearwood box and opening it. Replacing the gun and ammunition in the box, he closed the lid and returned it to the cupboard, locking the door.

Eric's rationality had returned with the act of revenge against Winchester, he mused as he poured himself a glass of fine whiskey. He hadn't been sure it would, and he'd been almost positive Dietrich had felt the same, had seen the Grigori's eyes cold and speculative on his brother several times. But it seemed, for now, it was all hunky-dory again and with acquisition of both tablet and prophet, they were well on schedule to gain the knowledge they needed. Not that the question of Winchester had been resolved. Not yet.

The file sat on the desk and he walked slowly back to the leather chair, dropping into it and setting the cut-crystal tumbler on the blotter beside the inch-thick folder. Alicia had been quite thorough, he thought, flipping open the cover. The books had helped enormously, of course, filling in the sort of gaps that no other source could've provided. He wondered briefly if Dean or his brother had read them, had realised just how much of their private lives had been exposed.

Baeder had acted without this knowledge about the man, without knowing how revenge had driven him most of his life. It would be interesting to see if Winchester pursued the Grigori for it now. He had quite a track record for achieving whatever he'd set out to do, the file was filled with accounts of angels and demons defeated and killed outright, archangels thwarted in their plans, escape after escape of the traps that had been set for them. No wonder Raphael had been practically foaming at the mouth to get a chance at him – and still, he'd failed.

The loyalty factor was particularly troublesome. There were, very occasionally, people who inspired that kind of following. But there was no indication that any of the populations in Kansas or Michigan thought that the Winchesters were divinely led, or different in any fundamental way. Rather, the loyalty was drawn by something else, something he had yet to discover. Closing the file, he rested his chin on his hand, thinking about the man who was renowned through all three planes as a spoiler, an uncommon but effective wrench-thrower. What he needed, he decided, was to talk to someone who would know how far it all reached back. Someone who had been there.

* * *

Draxler sat in the boy's bedroom, his arms around Jesse as the boy's shoulders shook.

"She just disappeared," Jesse mumbled, his breath coming in small hitches and gasps as his grief rose again. "She was in front of the woman we took, reaching out for her and then she was gone and I couldn't see her or hear her or even feel her anywhere."

The cambion's big hand rubbed the boy's back slowly as he envisioned the situation. It had to be a trap of some kind but he'd only heard of one thing that could trap them, his kind, and it was obvious, not invisible.

"There was no mirror there, large or small?" he asked Jesse gently.

"There wasn't anything there," Jesse said, his cheek resting against the man's chest. "Even after, I couldn't see anything, and I looked, I looked hard!"

"It will be alright, Jesse," Draxler said in a soft voice. "We will find her."

"She isn't …," he stopped, looking up at the man's face. "Do you think she's alive?"

"If you couldn't see a body, then yes, I think so," he said, his thumb wiping the tears from the boy's cheek. "It was a trap, of some kind."

"I can't feel her, Hubert," Jesse said, his voice rising. "I could always feel her, no matter where she was."

"Traps are different, Jesse," the cambion told him. "They hide the essence, the soul."

He lifted the boy easily and drew back the covers of the narrow single bed, setting him down on the pillows. "Go to sleep, it will be morning soon and we will start searching then."

Pulling the covers over the thin shoulders, he wondered how easy that would be. The demon might know of another trap for them, although Crowley had said nothing so far. The Grigori didn't know. He'd questioned them when they'd arrived at the house and they'd shrugged. But if the humans had found such a device, then so could he. He had time.

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Kansas**_

"Sam, look at this," Marla turned to him, handing him a thick sheaf of the notes Chuck had been transcribing. He took it, brow creasing up as he saw a thicker sheet in between the others.

"What is it?" he asked, setting the pile on the table, turning to the anomalous paper. His indrawn breath and glance around the room was automatic, even though he knew his brother wasn't there. Dean had been at the keep for the last week, working with Liev and Ryan on the repairs to the main structures, driving himself physically from dawn to dusk and then well into the night with whatever research anyone could come up with on the gates, the guides and their few scant notes on the first trial and the contract.

The note was in Alex's handwriting, backward slanting, even and neat, affixed to the thin sheet of paper by adhesive, an arrow drawn to the text beside it. It was the thin account of the second trial, he saw, his hand lifting and running through his hair as he read both the account and her opinions of it.

_This doesn't give enough detail. But the tablet is not a linear progression of ideas, not a narrative. The prophet was supposed to study it, as the theologists study the Bible and the Qu'ran and every other religious text or inspiration – is there more information within the things that appear to be non-related than we've suspected? We need the priests and Jasper going through the typed pages – studying them as Chuck was supposed to have studied the stone. There must be more information in it. Not necessarily hidden but maybe – misfiled? – a means to force more understanding that a simpler structure would have provided? The transporting of demons through the levels of Hell – gives us information that is vital to the second trial. I think there will be more like that – essential detail within the information._

"Where're the sections on demon transport?" Sam looked up at Marla and she turned away, flipping through the stacked reams of typed transcriptions. She pulled out the section, leaving the coloured sheet of paper marking the divisions between sections in place, and handed it to him.

Skimming over the pages, he saw it and realised what she'd meant. These were the detailed instructions on moving around the accursed plane they needed, from level to level, and through the tunnels and caverns that would move themselves without knowing how to stop them – but they hadn't been included with the trials. Closing his eyes and tipping back his head, he wondered how long it would've taken them to pick this up without her pointer. Too long, most likely.

"The first sections," he said to Marla, gesturing at the stacks of paper. "That were the histories and the hierarchies and the day-to-day stuff of running Hell – they all in order?"

She nodded, pushing a stray lock of dark brown hair back with one wrist. "They're in order and divided into their sections," she told him. "Like that one."

"We need to get Father Emilio and Father McConnaughey over here again," he said, glancing impatiently around. "And Jasper needs to start on this first thing in the morning."

"The additional information, needed for each trial, it's held in different places?" she asked, moving closer to him to read the note again.

"I think so," Sam said, abruptly aware of the brush of her arm against his. "Hidden in very plain sight. We might have enough to get moving on the first trial." Which would work for his brother, he realised. Dean was getting more and more short-tempered every day he was forced to be here instead of being able to get on with the job he wanted to do. He'd already put Ted Miller temporarily out of action when the burly farmhand had made an ill-advised comment after a few too many. Dean'd stopped after the first punch, but he hadn't pulled it and Ted would be spending the next few weeks drinking his food through a straw, his jaw wired shut while the fracture healed.

The hunters, and Franklin's grunts, had shrugged it off, especially those who'd been there. But the civilians weren't as ready to forgive it. Ted's friends had already been spreading the word that those who could kill with a blow should be forbidden from being able to do so to the people who couldn't defend themselves. It was a rather specious argument, considering the situation and the provocation of the moment, but Merrin had told him it had gained some support in some areas of the settlement.

Dean didn't give a rat's about what the population were thinking of him now, Sam knew. He didn't care about anything other than closing Hell, killing Crowley and the Grigori and finishing what he'd mockingly called his deal with Death. Half-tanked and filled with a fury that had crackled through him, Sam recalled that conversation with a slight shiver. His brother had somehow managed to convince Bob to flatline him when they'd returned from Iowa. So that he could talk to the entity, demand to know what'd happened to their deal. Bob had brought him back after seven minutes. He wouldn't talk about what happened in those seven minutes, but the rage had been growing ever since.

Pushing the escalating discomfort of those thoughts aside, he focussed on the pages in front of him. He needed more people but they had to be good, had to know what to look for, what to extrapolate from the fuzziness of the information. He needed someone who could decipher more of Chuck's handwriting than he could, although his ability had improved over the time Alex had been correcting the pages for him.

The Qaddiysh would be useful, he thought. And it would give them something to do other than sit on their heels waiting for the keep's leader to show some interest in the box they'd struggled to bring halfway around the world to him.

"Sam?" Marla's voice pulled him back to the library and he looked at her, noticing the deep shadows around her eyes. "You should probably get some sleep, if we're going to call everyone in tomorrow?"

"Yeah," he agreed, looking down at the papers in his hands self-consciously. "You too."

He got up and shuffled the papers together, leaving them in a pile next to the transportation section. If he could find all those little details, if _they_ could find all those details, he would still have to convince his brother to let him go along. He had no idea of how he was going to do that.

"_Bon nuit_," Marla said softly, walking from the table to the hall. He nodded and smiled. She'd told him that she was French, but had come to the US in her teens. There was still an occasional hint of an accent, in some words, or in turns of phrase, but she invariably said _good morning_ and _good night_ in the language, and it sounded somehow better than the regular version, he thought as he followed her to the end of the library and turned in the opposite direction to take the stairs to his room. More intimate, the thought bringing a faint flush to his neck.

* * *

_**West Keep, Kansas**_

_The smell of baking bread. Sunshine, pouring in through the wide, multi-paned windows and lighting the scrubbed pine table and wide-board floors to a honeyed gold. Smooth, creamy skin and wide, blue-green eyes that crinkled up as they looked at him_ and his breath left him in a soft, gentle sigh that was part contentment and part longing, the image clear and sharp in his mind.

His brows pulled together unconsciously as the scene shifted around him, _the room gone, the sunlight vanishing as the sky loomed forbiddingly overhead, bitterly cold and everything around grey and brown and lifeless_. _He shook his head, closing his eyes and seeing it anyway, a slow-motion fall down the hillside and laughter, like a crow's, filling his ears and the echoes of the shots fading away. He turned away and saw the dark-haired woman, staring down at him from the concrete overpass, eyes dark and cold and her lips covered in bright red, kissed with blood given freely from the creatures that stood behind her, the pale-eyed man, mouth bristling with pointed fangs, a tall and slab-muscled man with the head of a wolf, a beautiful woman whose skin melted and reformed as he watched, the tangle of long, red hair lifting in the rising wind to twist and writhe above her. He heard breathing, deep and unsteady and turned around, and the dog stood there behind him, staring at him, crimson eyes glowing from above the wolf's open and dripping mouth –_

Dean blinked as his chin slid off his palm, catching himself before he hit the table. He sat up, staring uncomprehendingly at his watch. Three forty-three. Morning or afternoon? A glance at the darkness outside the apartment's narrow windows confirmed morning.

He needed sleep. Wanted it. Looking at the bottle that sat to one side of the piles of books and notes and printouts he'd been searching through, he wondered how much it would take to knock him out past the point that his mind could fill his sleep with nightmares that were becoming worse and worse, every night. _Too much_, he told himself sourly. Too much to be able to do everything he needed to do. He looked away, closing the open book in front of him and getting to his feet tiredly.

The curtain wall had been extended and the foundations of the extra towers were being poured. Every day, he'd been down there with Liev and the couple of hundred civilians, digging, clearing the rubble, pouring concrete, setting stone. When it was too dark to see and the stocky builder called a halt, he came up here and found something to eat, immersing himself in every bit of lore or myth or real facts he'd been able to find about the gates, the guardian, the guides and Hell itself and what it would take to get it all finished and done with.

He hadn't thought any further than that, and he didn't want to.

Walking aimlessly around the room, looking unseeingly at the shelves, he veered into the kitchen after a minute, pulling a beer from the fridge and opening it, the cap catching on the ring that he was wearing.

The thick silver band had been his mother's. A reminder. That's all.

Seven minutes he'd spent looking for Death, seven minutes and the doughy shade of grey colouring Bob's face when the paddles had brought him back told him that it'd been too long, that Bob had thought he wasn't coming back.

It hadn't helped. He'd searched for Death – for Tessa – for anyone – finally resorting to a string of curses that he'd hoped would goad the entity out, but there'd been nothing. He'd given the middle-aged doc a near-coronary for nothing. The impulse to wear the ring again had been irrational and powerful and he'd followed it without a thought. He'd seen Sam look at it, the next day, but his brother hadn't asked and he couldn't have told him why in any case.

He tipped the bottle neck into his mouth and barely noticed the cold liquid rush down his throat. It didn't matter how exhausted he was by nightfall. Didn't matter how much he pushed at reading through the information he had from nightfall to past midnight, to the deepest watches of the night. He couldn't get tired enough to keep the dreams out. He couldn't get drunk enough.

He finished the beer on the second long swallow and tossed the bottle into the trash can in the corner, walking to the bedroom. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he pulled off his boots, letting them drop to the floor. He left his clothes on top of them and dragged the tangle of bedding more or less over himself. He might get an hour's sleep before he was woken. He might not. He didn't know.

* * *

"Dean, for the moment, there is not enough information to retrieve the prophet or the tablet, nor to initiate the trials for the closing of the Gates," Penemue said reasonably, standing beside the framework the hunter was erecting along the side of the wall.

"We have the means to intercept Ninhursag and Nintu in the next few weeks as they cross this continent," he continued, wondering if the man was even hearing him. He'd been trying to get a commitment from the hunter on a course of action for three days now and so far, he'd had zero acknowledgement in return. Dean ran the nail gun down the formwork sheet, nails thudding through the heavy ply into the frame, the close air in the corner of the new bailey sheening him in sweat.

"My priorities haven't changed since yesterday," he grunted, reaching the bottom and straightening up to look at the Watcher as he wiped a bare arm over his face.

"We all understand how important this is to you –"

"Apparently not," Dean said, his tone neutral, turning back to the wall. "Or you wouldn't keep trying to change my mind."

Penemue watched him pick up the next sheet and align it against the straight wooden frame. The clack and hiss and thud of the gun started again and he turned away, giving up.

"You're lucky he's civil to you," Ryan said to him, falling into step with him as they walked out of the half-built bailey. "Most people he either ignores completely or insults until they leave him alone."

Penemue nodded distractedly at the young builder's comment. "Do you know where the other senior hunters are?"

Ryan's brow wrinkled up. "You mean Rufus? Or Bobby? They're over at Lightning Oak, mostly right now. A lot to repair there too."

"My thanks," Penemue said, lengthening his stride as he headed for the gates. He needed someone to take notice of what he was saying, and perhaps the older hunters would know of a way to get through to Winchester that he'd been unable to think of.

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Kansas**_

Elena and Baraquiel sat at the end table, slowly deciphering Chuck's handwritten notes. The _Irin_ picked through the spidery scrawl of words, marking details that seemed more relevant than simply the information stated, looking for the clues that he was sure the Grigori were trying to find as well. He knew that they needed the power of the Word, in the stone itself, believing it would guide them to the tablet that had instructions for controlling the angels, for controlling Heaven. He wondered if they'd realised how much was contained in the tablet they held.

_The crossing of the rivers that border the lands is perilous. The boatman must be paid for the crossing, a coin of silver is the price of the journey. All souls being carried from one plane to the other require a payment._

But not all souls need to cross on the boat, he thought. There were places on the rivers where crossing was possible, easier and harder places. Led by the demon, Winchester had found such a place.

_The gates determine the approaches to the cliffs of Hell. Each gate has its own parameters. Each gate is controlled by one of the Fallen._

Baraquiel looked up, rubbing his fingers over his eyes tiredly. There were more than nine gates giving entrance to the accursed plane from this world. He frowned at the thought. Perhaps there had only been nine before Lucifer had been given human souls. Did it make a difference? Moloch, Pythius, Mammon and Astaroth had been killed in the siege to raise the soul of Winchester. Abaddon had been destroyed earlier than that, although none really knew the details of what had happened to the archdemon. Were there now only four archdemons still living? How had Crowley taken the Throne of Lucifer if there were? Even singly, they had more power than the demon could ever have hoped to wield against them.

He marked the passage. It was important somehow, although he couldn't work out why he felt that.

_In the borderland, the way is closed. The wolf of Hell guards and opens all doorways to the accursed plane. His blood is the key to every entrance, every crack and fissure in the cliffs._

In the texts held in their own library, Baraquiel remembered the books of the dead. The realm Lucifer had built was ringed with sheer cliffs. Impossible to scale, they walled the accursed plane and the doors that led through them were invisible to all but the angels. And the guardian.

Lying on the table in front of him, the black metal blade of the knife that Penemue had brought from Lucifer's hidden tomb gleamed oilily under the golden overhead light.

"What is that?" Elena asked him softly, her gaze following his to the knife.

"A weapon, specifically designed for hellspawn," Baraquiel told her, lifting the knife and handing it to her. It was very light and her brows rose as she took it and felt the balance through her fingers and wrist.

"Japanese?" she asked, looking along the length of the long blade. "The shape is similar to a _tachi_."

He smiled. "Yes, the man who made it was Japanese."

"_Jokoto_?" She looked at the edge. "I have never seen a Japanese sword like this."

"_Saiko no ken yori mo furui_," he corrected. "Very few have ever seen a blade like this. Kajiwara no Tosabô was a man like you, a hunter. A very skilled hunter. He made this knife, and the others, for a war against demonkind in fifteen hundred and ninety-six AD."

"But it's – it's folded," she said, frowning at him as she looked at the distinctive markings on the blade and laid the knife back on the table. "I thought that technique wasn't in use until after Christ?"

"It wasn't," Baraquiel said. "He developed the composite steel blade and added the blood that gives it its colour – and its power. His weapons can kill any hellspawn," he added softly, looking down at the pages in front of him. "Except the Fallen."

"So this blade can kill Cerberus?"

Baraquiel nodded distractedly. "Yes, it will be essential to the first trial."

Watching his face, Elena asked, "What is it?"

"There were four left, that I know of," he told her. "Four archdemons and the crossroads demon took control of Hell. That should not have been possible – for any demon."

"Perhaps he found a way to bind them?"

"Yes," Baraquiel agreed. "Perhaps."

* * *

Father Emilio turned over the last page of the first section of Hell's histories and leaned back in his chair. Much of what he'd read he'd already been familiar with, the basics of it, at least. The origins of the pit and the non-corporeal and non-human demonic creatures that had inhabited it. The bottomless abyss. The ancient forces that had been the guardians before Lucifer had fallen and had banished them. Hell, in one form or another, had always existed.

Across the table, Father McConnaughey's head was bent over the papers on the table, bushy silver brows drawn together as he read, the steady rustle of paper signalling another page turned over. At the end of the table, Sam and Marla were talking quietly, heads close together. Father Emilio's attention sharpened a little on them. Marla had begun her initiation into the order, he knew, although all such things were on hiatus until Jerome had recovered fully. He watched as Sam turned to her, his smile washing the tension from his face when she smiled back, then the glossy dark curtain of her hair swung forward as she ducked her head to look back down at the pages in front of them.

Sam had come a lot closer to understanding the things that had driven him along the road he'd chosen, the Jesuit considered. And more essentially, to accepting them. The overwhelming desire for penance, for punishment, was, he thought, being relinquished to the desire for atonement in its place. And hope always came much easier when the future could be envisioned.

"Jasper," Katherine said, looking down the table at him, the urgency in her voice breaking through the priest's thoughts.

"What?" Jasper asked as he got up and walked down to her. "What are you looking at?"

"The third section of the histories of the demons – the human demons," she said, moving her chair to give him room to sit beside her.

"What have you found?" Father Emilio leaned across the table toward her.

Glancing at him, she gestured at the pages that Jasper was reading as he lowered himself into the chair beside her. "I'm not sure but it looks as if it relates to the cambion."

Sam's head lifted and both he and Marla turned to look at her.

"Out loud, Jasper," Katherine said dryly, seeing the interest.

The professor looked up and nodded, going back to the top of the section. "_The soul, even perverted, even blackened beyond possibility of redemption, may find entry into the living, into the sons and daughters of Adam. This possession of another may take the form of imprisoning the original soul, using the body to its own ends, or it may go deeper, infiltrating every cell including the very instructions that live in every cell and are passed from generation to generation_."

He glanced at Sam. "That's what I was telling you, about the cambion's creation."

Sam nodded impatiently. "What else?"

"_The demon may begat another creature in this state – a creature with its own true power and soul, the issue of the tortured soul and the imprisoned soul and the soul of the woman who will bear it and bring it forth. The creature is cambion and an abomination in the eyes of Heaven and of all in the world_." He took a breath, his eyes on the page. "_Joining the planes, the mind of the cambion draws from both until maturity. As the cambion ages, the ability to draw on the power of the planes diminishes_."

"We know that," Father Emilio said mildly.

"Wait a minute," Jasper told him, holding up a hand. "The cambion soul is unique –"

He stopped reading and lifted his head, staring past Sam to the wall of shelving. "I know this," he murmured, half to himself. "I've seen this before."

"Jasper, we've checked every possible source on the cambion here and in the other chapters –" Katherine said, exasperation in her voice.

"Not about the cambion," the old man snapped, getting up from the chair and pivoting on his heel. "It was an account of the different souls, pre-Imperial China … I know this, goddammit!"

Katherine, Sam and Marla stared after him as he almost ran from the library, hearing his footsteps pounding down the hall.

"What's the rest of that text say?" Marla asked Katherine, gesturing to the pages.

"The cambion soul is unique in that with the death of the creature, there is no resting place for it," Katherine continued, pushing her glasses firmly onto her nose. "Neither Heaven nor Hell can accept the soul."

"That's it?" Sam glanced at Marla and then at Katherine. "How does that help?"

"It's the first mention of the cambion from the tablet," Katherine said. "That it's acknowledged here suggests that there will be more about them."

"If Chuck got that far."

The normally stiff expression of the silver-haired researcher softened as she nodded. "Yes, if he got that far."

None of them wanted to dwell on the thoughts that filled their minds on the prophet's current situation.

* * *

It was an hour before Jasper came pounding back down the hall, a plastic-wrapped manuscript in his hand.

"I knew I'd seen this before," he said breathlessly, setting the fragile text on the table. "The Mirror of a Thousand Souls."

He threw himself into the chair beside Katherine and unwrapped the text. Sam saw Katherine frown as she stared at the characters on the fine parchment.

"That's not _hanzi_."

"No, much earlier," Jasper said, dragging on a pair of gloves and picking up the tweezers as he lifted the first page aside. "It was an account of a Chinese magician, a black magician who made deals with demons for power –"

He found the page and leaned closer to it. "_The mirror captured the souls of the abominations, leaving their bodies empty and untenanted. The souls were visible behind the glass, the incantation and the metal that backed the backed the mirror holding them there forever_."

"The magician passed the mirror to the first Emperor and it was in the royal line for centuries. In 1644, Li Zicheng captured the Forbidden City and it disappeared. It reappeared in the seventeen hundreds in Russia, a part of the treasures taken over by the revolutionary army that destroyed the Romanovs and the Tsarist rule, and it disappeared without a trace again," he told them. "Legend said that it was cursed, and anyone who held it would face treachery from their own people, but the older lore was that it contained the souls of the half-demons and demi-gods, who whispered to those who passed and incited the unrest."

"Any proof that it actually exists?" Katherine asked him dryly.

"Quite a lot," Jasper said acerbically. "There are photographs of it in Alexander Palace."

"But no one knows where it is now?" Marla looked at him, one brow raised.

"No," Jasper said, looking down the library toward the situation room. "But with something solid to search for, the other chapters may have more information."

* * *

_**West Keep, Kansas**_

Rufus pulled up in the corner of the bailey, the pickup's engine silenced as he turned the key and swung out of the cab. Bobby was still hobbling around, but much of the work had been done on rebuilding the tower in Lightning Oak, and he was glad to be back here, despite the cacophonous noise of the rebuilding that went on from dawn to dusk.

The fallen angel who'd come to see them had been adamant that something had to be organised as soon as possible, and he knew how frustrating Dean could be if he decided to just stonewall. He wasn't sure he was going to be able to make much of a difference to the man's mindset, but they'd agreed, the four of them, that he'd better try.

On cue, he heard the deep voice, snarling at some luckless individual.

"Left foot! Christ, how many times do you have to be told? You wanna get yourself killed?!"

Going through the short tunnel to the other court, Rufus saw Dean first, stripped down to jeans only, sweat lightly gleaming in the warmth of the late morning sunshine, facing Ben who stood, head hanging, a flush of red rising up his neck.

He stopped at the shadowy entrance and watched as Dean dragged in a breath and stepped back.

"Try again!"

The order was snapped out and Ben lifted his head, dropping into a slight crouch as he watched the man circle him. His heart wasn't in it, Rufus thought, seeing Dean's expression harden as he noticed it too. For a moment he thought the man was going to yell at the boy again, but Dean straightened up, turning abruptly on his heel and walking to the steps of the keep to get his shirt.

Behind him, Ben stood watching him, shoulders slumped.

"That's enough for today," Dean said brusquely over his shoulder. "I got work to do."

Nodding, the boy turned away, heading for the tunnel on the other side of the courtyard and the east tower. Rufus walked out of the shadows and over to the steps.

"Get up on the wrong side this morning?" he asked mildly.

Dean looked around at him, dragging the t-shirt that was patchy with sweat over his head.

"He'll never learn if he's treated like a fucking kid," he snapped. "What do you want?"

"Had a visit from one of the Qaddiysh this morning," Rufus said, ignoring the tone. "They dragged that box halfway around the world. They want to get on with it."

Dean tensed for a moment at the unspoken rebuke in the older hunter's voice, then he shrugged. "I need a coffee," he said, walking up the steps to the keep doors without looking back.

Rufus tipped his head back and let out his breath. Not the most gracious of invitations, but better than the possible alternatives, he thought. He walked up the steps and into the keep.

* * *

Following Dean into the apartment, Rufus slowed and looked around as the hunter headed for the kitchen. In the last two weeks, Dean had changed, and as he took in the details of the room, he began to understand why.

Nothing had been altered in here, he thought uneasily. It all looked the same, Alex's coats still hanging on the rack by the door, a thick knitted scarf still lay where it'd been thrown over the back of the long sofa, her notes were scattered over and through the piles of books and sheafs of paper that filled the table. The only difference he could see was the profusion of unwashed dishes and mugs that now littered most of the spaces in between the books.

Dean came out of the kitchen, the light from the windows sliding over the planes and hollows of his face as he set two cups of black coffee on the table, pulling out the chair behind one.

He looked … pared back, Rufus thought, walking slowly to the other side of the table, the bones jutting out, a couple of days' worth of stubble dark against the pale skin, every hard muscle delineated beneath the thin shirt, what little fat he'd had stripped away.

"We can't keep those angels waitin' around forever, Dean," he said, shifting a pile of books from the chair to the floor and sitting down.

"No," Dean agreed readily, looking absently at the pile of notes at his elbow. "No, Jasper called. They were right; both of those bitches are in the country now."

"So," Rufus said slowly, picking up his coffee. "What do you want to do?"

"Bobby talked to Boze and Ty this morning," Dean said. "Werewolves are packing up in the forests north of them, they don't know where they came from, or where they found survivors. They talked to Maurice about what he found – it's possible they've come down from Canada."

Rufus saw a flash of irritation pass over the younger man's features, saw the muscle at the point of his jaw bunch for a moment and relax.

"We'll need to divvy up the workload," Dean said, rubbing a hand over his jaw. "I figured Mel and Maurice could get over to Tawas, help out there, take a few trainees with them."

Rufus nodded. "We'll need a strong team for the goddesses, can only take 'em one at a time."

"Sam and Nate can take one of the Watchers, a few of the trainees, go up to Montana and see if they can grab the one coming south now," said Dean. "Michel has movement on the other one, heading south and already past us. Said that they found the location of the lockbox for the first Skinwalker. He thinks she's heading for Texas –"

"Yenaaldlooshii," Rufus murmured. Irritation flashed in Dean's eyes again as he nodded sharply.

"Down in Big Lake. You, me, Penemue," he told him. "We'll take Jack, Perry and Zoe – she's the only one not knocked up from that group. We can't intercept Nintu but we can take out the skinwalker before she gets there, if we leave tomorrow."

"Alright, silver all round."

Dean nodded. "There's a lot more to do here. Bobby, Vince, Elias and Ellen can stick around and keep things going." He looked at the books stacked over the table. "I can't find anything useful here anyway, not enough to get started."

"Bobby said that Jasper might've found a possible way to deal with the cambion –"

"Yeah, he told me," Dean cut him off. "Some kind of mirror. Doesn't help right now. We know they're in Boston, somewhere, but Jerome's tried that spell four times now and the result doesn't change. The Watchers think there's a shield over the location." He shook his head. "If I can't get to Chuck and the gun, I'll need a way in and out of the borderlands to kill Cerberus."

"What about the gate you used before?" Rufus frowned for a moment. "In Pennsylvania."

Dean leaned back in the chair, his eyes slightly hooded as he looked at him. "It's closed. Gone."

Rufus raised a brow. "You had time for a trip?"

He shook his head. "Penemue used a spell, scried for it. Said that someone had been holding it open but whatever they'd done was finished."

It explained a little of Dean's increasing anger, Rufus realised. That would've been a quick way to get to the dog and kill it.

"So, do they know of any others?"

"No." He drained his coffee and pushed the cup aside. "They're looking for them."

"Did you take a look at those knives Penemue brought out of Lucifer's crypt?"

"Yeah," Dean said, shrugging as he got up. "It's got a better reach than Ruby's knife. Supposed to be a killer for demonspawn, but whether it'll work against that dog …"

"Bobby tells me you're planning on going in alone," Rufus said, his voice neutral and without inflexion. Dean glanced at him.

"Trial says only one needed," he answered the non-question expressionlessly.

For a moment, Rufus wondered if he should just leave it. _A man had a right to take the action he needed to take_. Alex's voice murmured through that thought. _He's your friend_.

"There're two others after that one," he said carefully. "Might make sense to have backup until it's down to the wire?"

The dark green eyes studied him. "Whatever it is you wanna say, Rufus, get it out. I don't have the time to waste on you hinting around it."

The warning was there, implicit in the tone. Rufus sighed. "Nothing, it's good."

"Good."

Watching the hunter go down the hall to the bedroom, Rufus chewed on the inside of his cheek, wondering if he was making the right call. He looked around the room again. When he'd lost Nance, he'd gone up to Whitefish, spent a year in the cabin there on his own, unable to deal with anyone else, trying to get as far from the memories as he could. Different people handled grief differently, he thought. But living here, like this, it didn't seem like Dean was doing any grieving.

* * *

_**Chambre d'ombres, France**_

The underground library was warmly lit by lamps and sconces and the low fire. Antoinette leaned back in the deep, comfortable armchair and let out her breath. There were entirely too many legends about magic mirrors, she thought tiredly, setting the book she'd been reading aside for a moment.

"This is it," Alain said from the other side of the room. "Línghún de Jìngzi. The trail stops in St Petersburg, though."

Francesca rose from her chair, the movement reminiscent of a feline as she stalked to the table to look over his shoulder.

"No, not stopped," she said, turning abruptly away. "Jean, those files on the VCheKa, from 1917, please."

The slim dark-haired man turned and walked out of the library.

"You found another lead?" Alain looked curiously at her. Never expressive, Francesca's face was hard and cold as she nodded.

"We were never able to trace the mirror from the Forbidden City to Europe, not even when there was a full complement of us here and in the other chapters, but the Qaddiysh … Baraquiel said that the Grigori had split up, the angel had told him –" she paused as Jean came back in, a bundle of leather-bound files in his arms.

"Look at the faces carefully," Francesca said, opening the first. Affixed to the inside cover, a slightly overexposed black and white photograph showed a group of men, primarily dark-haired, standing together on the steps of a grand building, snow around their feet. Alain stared at them. All wore the same clothing, dark pants and a long, flowing leather coat that came to the middle of the shins, with a high collar and buttoned to the neck. He looked at the note at the bottom.

"_Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия по борьбе с контрреволюцией и саботажем_," he read out. "The All-Russian Emergency Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage." He looked up at her, one brow lifted. "The beginnings of the Russian secret service, yes?"

"The two on the right, Alain," she told him sharply.

"I've seen them before," he said slowly, picking up a magnifying glass from the table and lifting it over the photograph, the magnification picking out more detail in the faces.

"You have," Francesca agreed. "They were also in the photographs of the Thule Society, in 1937."

"Grigori?" Antoinette got up and walked to the table. "They took the mirror from the palace? How?"

"This one is Zhydelev," Francesca told her. "One of the group sent to execute the Romanovs. The other is Yakov Yurovsky. He shot Nicholas, Tatiana and Alexei himself. That was July 1918. By the following year, they had escaped to Germany and had become Erik Baeder and Dietrich Eckart, and the mirror and all the other items they'd found went with them."

"Penemue said that their names are really Ashriel and Mossaque," Alain said. "You think they came to Europe to cause civil unrest?"

"I think they came to study," Francesca said, sitting in the chair to one side of him. "I think they were looking for the spells or artefacts that would further their cause. And the power to conduct whatever experiments they wanted to do in secrecy and with authority. The VCheka's reputation for torture was extensive. The Nazis – certain sections of the Nazi Party were the same."

"According to Shamsiel, they wanted to return to Heaven." A small crease appeared between Antoninette's dark red brows. "How would torture and murder help with that?"

"Yes, they wanted to return to Heaven," Francesca said heavily. "Apparently, they believed that there were ways to do so that were accessible by magic. Why do you think they are searching for the angel tablet?"

"And the mirror is how they're controlling the cambion?" Antoinette asked.

"I don't know, but I would think so." The elegant woman lifted a hand in a dismissive gesture. "The cambion are significantly more powerful than they are, yet the Americans said that they were working under the Grigori's control."

"Michel!" Alain got up and walked down to the situation room. "We need to get a communiqué to the US immediately."

* * *

_**Gallatin National Forest, Montana**_

The mountains towered over them, still capped and mantled in snow, the temperatures freezing and the gusting wind that blew through the valley icy from the glaciers higher up. Sam blew on his fingers as he picked through the lock on the thick metal door.

"Why'd the military have a base up here?" Joseph asked, looking around the long, narrow valley. "There's nothing here."

"Not a base, son, a ground station," Nate said, pulling his collar higher around his ears. "Uplink to the satellite."

"With no power, how do we get it going?"

"There'll be gennies in here," Sam grunted, the rusted lock giving way finally with a deep clunk inside the door. He straightened up and pressed down on the handle and the door shifted inwards. He looked over his shoulder. "Stay here, Nate and I'll check it out."

Behind Joseph, Shamsiel, Lee and Billy watched the empty valley, guns held loosely, safeties off and rounds chambered. Before they'd left Kansas, Michel had tracked Ninhursag from Alaska to British Columbia, advising that the line of travel had been straight, along the Rockies. The goddess hadn't crossed into Alberta, remaining in the high peaks.

Inside the bunker, the concrete tunnel ran straight for ten yards and a set of stairs led down.

"Safe from nuclear attack, anyhow," Nate said dryly, his flashlight beam illuminating the safety notices still attached to the wall.

Sam nodded, going down the stairs. "Air's dry – and clean," he commented, swinging the light when he reached the bottom. More signs, painted on the grey concrete walls directed them to the various areas within the station. "I'll take the control room. You want to see if you can get the power going?"

Nate shrugged and turned right, heading down another flight of stairs as Sam turned left. The control room was several doors along, and he stepped over the dried-up bodies of the people who'd died from the virus carefully. They were bloodless now, but the deep dark stains that covered their clothing showed that they'd been infected and died while in the first stage of Pestilence's disease, the tight skin around their mouths covered with the same stains. He wondered bleakly if there would any useable equipment left in the building, remembering the rage he and Dean had seen on the first test run in Oregon, the wanton destruction the disease had caused.

He stopped as a series of deep rumbles vibrated through the concrete floors and into his boot soles. The building hummed for a moment, then the lights in the hallway flickered, listless fluorescent tubes coming on one at a time from the end toward him.

"Guess the gennies work," he muttered to himself, turning off his flashlight and walking more quickly to the door marked with a large green-painted 'C'. To his surprise, the door opened readily as he pushed down on the handle, and the banks of equipment inside were intact, lights glowing, flickering and blinking on the expanse of grey metal panels as the current ran through them.

* * *

The laptop's screen lit up Sam's face as he found the protocols for the uplink, just where Michel and Mitch had told him. He entered the commands and breathed a sigh of relief as the connection was established, the list scrolling down the screen as it was supposed to. Finding the French chapter's address was simple and he'd established contact a few minutes later, the cheerful bonjour from Michel reminding him of Marla.

The list of coordinates appeared a moment later, steadily moving south-east along the road that ran down the backbone of the mountain ranges. Michel's comment followed.

"Still on target, no deviation shown over the last three hundred miles. She passed Helena this morning. You're in the right position."

The goddess had not taken the easier path of travelling down the roads that ran through the Rockies, keeping between fifty and a hundred and fifty miles to the east of them. Helena was just over a hundred miles from them in a straight line. She would be in the valley before nightfall.

He looked over his shoulder at Shamsiel and Nate, grinning slightly. "Time to lay the trap."

Shamsiel looked at the path of Ninshursag, the coordinates overlaid onto a map of the area now.

"I need to be away from that box," he told the hunters as Sam packed up the laptop and they followed the corridors back to the surface. Both hunters turned to him in surprise. The _Irin_ shrugged.

"I have no soul, nothing to protect me from being drawn in along with her," he explained. "The other planes, they are designed for us, creatures of energy, or those creatures that have been fundamentally altered from their original purpose. It is why you can enter them in your flesh and your blood and your bone, and return, your souls protect you, keep you apart." He gestured to the mountains lifting to the north of them.

"I will move two ridges further north, and let you know when I see the changes she makes."

Nate nodded. "Can you actually see them?"

The _Irin_ smiled, his teeth white against the dark skin. "Now? After so many passes, oh, yes, I'll see them." He stopped as Nate opened the outer door. "And you, my friends, you will feel her when she is close."

Both men swallowed slightly. The effects of the creation goddess were known, although none of them could really imagine how it would affect them, to be so close to her.

He gestured at the bottles of thick, dark red liquid that sat in a line along the hood of the SUV. "The designs will keep you from her notice and they will, to a certain extent, protect you from the effects of the field she generates. So long as the box is open when she enters the valley, it should do most of the work," the _Irin_ continued, chuckling slightly. "The spell is merely a formality, Sam."

"Stay in line of sight, Shamsiel," Nate said to the angel. "Radio won't get through if there's a peak in the way."

"Will do."

They watched him walk fast across the rocky pasture, then Nate looked at the young men in front of him.

"Joseph, you're here with the car," he told him. "Make sure you paint yourself up before she gets here. There's nothing we can do to affect this, so priority is making sure we all get out of here alive and in one piece. Stay on the radio in case we need medical help."

Joseph nodded. Nate looked at Sam who had the box in the bag over his shoulders and had taken two of the bottles. "Sam and me'll take the trapping part, Lee, you and Billy are radio relay. Get to the top of those ridges and pass on whatever Shamsiel tells you."

They turned, each grabbing a bottle from the hood, and headed for the ridge lines on opposite sides of the narrowing valley. Nate looked at Sam.

"Figure we've got that much more control than they do," he said dryly to the younger man. "I'll hang back, two-three hundred yards, but if you fall over, I'll be there to close it."

Sam nodded uncomfortably. "Let's just hope we're both still conscious by the time she gets close."

* * *

_**State Highway 137, Texas**_

Penemue watched the flat horizon, never getting any nearer, at the end of the road the black car roared along. The man driving hadn't spoken since they'd left the keeps, his attention fixed on the road, avoiding the holes and cracks and abandoned rusted heaps easily. The _Irin_ sensed the rage that was being held down but hadn't seen it. Winchester had good control, he thought.

"What do we do if we're too late and she's already released the skinwalker?" Zoe asked from the back seat.

Dean flicked a glance at Penemue and shrugged. "See if we can pick up a trail and kill him."

"Is that possible?"

"All things are possible," Penemue answered, half-turning to look back at her. "But it will be exceedingly difficult."

Dean's gaze shifted to the mirror, seeing the grey pickup behind them. Rufus was driving, Perry and Jack squeezed into the bench seat beside him. With six, it would be possible, he thought, difficult or not. He had a strong sense that they were too late, the creative forces that were loose moved across the world very fast. And they couldn't catch up, could only intercept. Michel had sent through the last location – Utah – for the first vampire. Usiku was locked within the mountains and that's where they'd be heading as soon as they'd killed the skinwalker. That the Grigori also had a base there was a bonus – if he could find it.

A battered and colourless sign flashed by as he manoeuvred the car around a three-car pile up that looked oddly like a piece of welded modern art, the paint gone and the metal left, rusted to a uniform reddish-brown. Big Lake was ten miles ahead.

Crouching by the side of the well, Dean looked at the four-toed tracks leading away from it. On the ball of the foot, heavy. Around him, chunks of turf and torn earth had been scattered in a fifty-foot radius around the deep hole in the ground, the force exerted from the inside. Penemue had found a small pool of blood, very dark crimson to one side. The sight brought a cold feeling of familiarity to Dean, and he'd shaken it off with difficulty.

He looked up, gaze following the trail which headed straight north-east. The goddess had gone. The skinwalker would be gathering its own children, making more, he thought, remembering what Peter and Elena had told them about the pack they'd encountered in the northern states.

"Loaded with silver," Rufus said quietly beside him as he straightened up.

He nodded. "Sweetwater's that direction. We'll take the road, you follow the trail."

"There's a big water tank at one of the lake," Rufus told him. "We'll meet you there after taking a quick look around."

* * *

"This skinwalker," Penemue said slowly, as they got back into the Impala. "It is a man?"

"Shapeshifter," Dean said shortly, starting the engine and easing the car over the dry lake's uneven surface. "One of them."

"It can change form," Zoe said from the back. "Transform into a dog at will."

"A were creature?"

"No," Dean answered. "The werewolf, and all the other variations need a trigger. Like the moon. Skinwalkers and shapeshifters can change without the trigger." He turned to look curiously at the Qaddiysh. "I thought you guys knew all about this stuff?"

Penemue shook his head. "No, we are not like your order of scholars. We were tasked with teaching humanity. Providing the knowledge – slowly – that was needed for the final stage, when Heaven and Hell would no longer be required. Perhaps there are reasons for the monstrosities that God allowed to populate the Earth on the tablets we haven't found, but we have no knowledge of them."

"Typical," Dean snorted. "Doesn't seem like that knowledge was given slowly enough."

"Even within those of us who Fell because we were asked to, there was dissent and argument about the knowledge we had to teach," Penemue said, his fingers pushing the thick, straight black hair back from his forehead. "Azazel enjoyed meddling, and teaching things that mankind was not ready for."

"And that's why Lucifer got him, when he died?"

"Yes." Penemue glanced at him, knowing the history of the Campbells and the Winchesters. "Had anyone been able to foresee that particular line of destiny, it would've been changed."

Dean laughed, a short, humourless bark. "I doubt it. Whatever's going on up there, it's been under construction for a long time. They knew what they were doing."

"They did not realise what they created, in you and your brother, Dean," the Qaddiysh said quietly. "Did not realise the way in which the weapon of their own destruction would be forged and tempered by the trials they put before you."

Dean flicked a glance at him. "You think that's true?"

"We watched a mortal man kill the most powerful of the Fallen," Penemue said with a shrug. "Heaven watched too, though Michael and the Host were here. Raphael saw. And others who have been better at hiding themselves. There was no precedent in any world, or in any dimension, for what you and Sam did that day."

Dean was silent, but the Qaddiysh saw his fingers close a little tightly around the wheel as the car turned onto the asphalt and headed east.

* * *

_**Gallatin National Forest, Montana**_

_There it was_, Shamsiel thought, smelling the change in the air, the deepening and thickening of it as every scent became rich and sharp, flooding his senses. He couldn't see her, although he could feel the fecund femininity, the potent charge of a primal arousal that drove every living thing, to join, to procreate, to multiply and be fruitful and to cover the earth. He smiled a little at the throb in his body, unfelt for centuries where mind had overtaken the considerations of flesh, but as well-remembered as any other purely visceral experience he'd had after Falling.

He watched the grasses sway and stretch up, growing as she passed. Watched the animals and birds and reptiles come out of their burrows and dens in the shadows of the clefts in the hills, ears pricked, eyes wide, fur and feathers and scales standing on end.

"Billy, can you hear me?" he said softly into the radio he held. "She's here."

"Roger that, Shamsiel," Billy's voice crackled and hissed in the static. "She's here. Got it."

The crack of the branches behind him didn't register for a moment, but the thick, rank smell washed over him and Shamsiel turned, staring up at the long ursine snout, the small, dark eyes a little red-rimmed from the effects that were filling the valleys and mountains.

The bear's muzzle wrinkled back, revealing long, yellowing incisors and blasting him with a wave of foetid breath. The Qaddiysh crouched frozen in front of it, staring back, trying to recall every piece of information, heard or read, about the descendants of the cave bears. In front of him, the grizzly huffed and shifted its weight, one paw swinging out casually, the sharp, black claws catching only air as Shamsiel scuttled backward and disappeared over the edge of the rock with a startled squawk.

The drop was short but hard, and he bounced down the slightly sloping ledge, fingers scrabbling for a hold as a bolt of pain shot up through his leg, through his groin and into his back. Above him, the bear looked down, mouth opening and a roar of disappointment echoing over the hard rock.

The second drop as he failed to find anything to stop his descent, was much longer. Air exploded from his lungs as he hit the rounded boulder on his back, and his vision greyed and flickered when the bones of his leg ground together with the impact. The protrusion from the slab-sided upthrust of granite was smaller but flatter and he lay there panting shallowly, fingers clenched into fists as he tried to shut away the white fire that was devouring his leg and get some air back into his chest at the same time.

The grizzly stared down at him and Shamsiel saw the mixture of confusion and frustration as it paced along the cliff edge. He was a little over twenty feet below it, safe enough, he supposed from that particular danger now. Turning his head slowly, he saw the sheer cliff below him. The radio was still clutched in one hand, knuckles raw and bleeding from protecting the device as he'd slid down the rough stone. He hoped it was still working.

* * *

Joseph swore as he tried to see the design he was painting on himself in the small field of view of the side mirror. The liquid stung and stunk, a double insult, and it was supposed to coat his arms and neck as well. He hadn't heard Shamsiel's transmission, but Billy's response had come through loud and clear and he wondered how long he had before the goddess passed by him.

The answer came as he finished swabbing the thick, stinking contents of the bottle over his shoulders and up his neck, his mind suddenly filling with images, blood rushing through his body and his muscles tightening and contracting as he slid down the door of the car and sprawled on the ground.

* * *

On the ridgelines to the south, Billy yanked off his jacket and shirts, pulling out the cork that held the bottle closed with his teeth and pouring a handful of the viscous red liquid into his palm. His nerve endings were prickling and crackling and he slathered the liquid over his arms as fast as he could, shifting position as he realised that his jeans were too tight and he was starting to ache, his concentration faltering as memories and pictures and sensation filled his mind and body.

* * *

Sam closed his eyes, dropping to his knees in front of the small wooden box as he felt the first, languid stirrings of the air around him. He unlocked the lid, lifting it back, the cold bite of the wind that rose from within it shocking the images from his mind and stealing the heat from his body, an unimaginable cold, filled with the scent of frozen metal.

Two hundred yards behind and to one side of him, Nate lay on the ground, eyes rolled back in his head. Resolutely keeping his eyes on the box and the incline of the valley in front of him, Sam could nevertheless hear the man's grunts even at that distance.

A zephyr ruffled his hair, soft and warm. He opened his eyes as it strengthened, unconsciously inhaling the scents it carried, the cold of the abyss waiting in the box by his knees forgotten as the rich and complex aromas filled him. The valley was brighter, he thought dazedly, clearer, somehow, every leaf and blade of grass standing out with a razor keenness he couldn't remember encountering before. Looking down at his hand, resting lightly on the lid, every fold and detail was visible, with a clarity that seemed preternatural. _And probably was_, he told himself, dragging a shred of thought back from the morass of sensations flooding through him. _She's here, you have to speak the spell and close the lid_.

Heart booming in his ears. The rasp of his breath through a throat that was suddenly dry. An uncoiling heat that advanced in waves, brightening and dimming with his pulse. Every remembered image, every remembered touch, every remembered reaction coruscated through his nervous system, pounding along the marrow of his bones.

"_Piamo caosgon_," Sam ground out, the Enochian words caught in the mire of his thoughts. "_Allar gigipah. Drix saanir … sibsi qaal caosg … haala zacam iadnah_."

His vision was dimming, a red film over his eyes. He wiped at them and looked down at the blood that coated his knuckles, feeling a trickle from his nose as it ran down over his lip at the same time.

The wind funnelled down the valley toward him, bending the short grass before it, and Sam felt his heart accelerate unbearably, throbbing in his wrists and the insides of his elbows, pulsing at the hollow of his throat, pounding in his groin, the quickening beat sledging into his ribs. His eyes widened as the air in front of him thickened.

She walked toward him, pale and translucent at first, glowing like a spectre against the dark grey mountain sides, long white hair lifting and swirling around her face. Milk-white skin and pale eyes that were fixed on his. Full, high breasts and curving waist and rounded hips. His breath was caught somewhere in his chest and he was unable to move as she approached him, his heart thundering now, pain filling his side almost unnoticed in the insistent throbbing heat, blood racing along his veins and arteries and spilling down his face.

"_Piamo caosgon allar gigipah_," Sam murmured, no idea if the words had been said aloud or were just an incoherent fragment of thought. "_Drix … saanir sibsi qaal … caosg haala zacam … iadnah_."

So close and he could see the porcelain flawlessness of her skin, the flecks of gold against the silver-grey irises, the lush full lips, tinted rose and her breath over his face, scented of meadows and flowers and deep, dark earth.

Pain ripped through his side, shooting from his chest and down his arm, his heart fibrillating and the blood vessels swollen and leaking. She leaned closer and he felt the muscle in his chest stop, the cessation of the beat shaking through him as he lifted his head to her, eyes on her lips.

She was gone, and Sam's hands released the lid of the box as he fell forward.

* * *

_**West Keep, Kansas**_

Adam lay in the warm room, eyes closed as he listened to the sounds that had become familiar over the past three weeks. Not at all like a hospital, though his memories of hospitals were few and far between. He remembered the bowls of ice-cream when his tonsils came out, and that was about it.

The rooms Kim had – had had, he amended to himself, with a soft sigh – the rooms that Merrin and Bob used for patient recovery had been built around the chimneys from the lower floors, radiating a dry warmth without needing open fires in them. He knew Jerome and Felix were in the room next to his. Rudy was in the bed on the other side of his room, also gut-shot and likely to be here for a few more months, as he was.

This time, no one had blamed him for what had happened when the cambion and nephilim had attacked the order, but he felt the failure for himself. Chuck had just disappeared out of the circle of fire, and nothing he'd been able to do had stopped it. He hadn't even been able to protect the scholars, or his own men.

The room smelled of fresh linen and dried herbs, the strong scents rising on the constant circulation of warm air. Stronger still, the paste that coated his abdomen from ribcage to pelvis, wrapped in thin layers of open-weave gauze, followed him into his dreams with its woodland scent, vaguely reminiscent of mushrooms and moss. Merrin had told him that it had numbing properties and he hadn't had much pain, after the bullet had been extracted.

"Adam?"

He opened his eyes, seeing Chris hovering near his bed. "Hey."

"Hey," she said, her voice filled with relief. "How're you doing?"

He looked up at her and made a small, vague gesture with one hand. "Not bad, all things considered."

She wore a simple shift dress over close-fitting pants, the swell of her stomach pronounced beneath it. He glanced at the bulge and up to her face.

"You're going to have a family?"

"Like everyone else," Chris said dryly, pulling the chair from beside the bed and sitting down. "Twins, due in July."

"Are you going to keep hunting?"

"I don't know," she said, looking down at her hands, clasped on her lap. "I'll have to wait and see how I feel about it. Merrin's organising adoptions – there are a lot of girls who're really too young to be starting families, and a surprising number of women who lost their children, or want them but couldn't have them."

Nodding, Adam remembered the conversation he'd overhead between the nurse and Dr Sui a few months ago. A lot of the slaves that had been rescued from the devil's cities had been tortured to a greater or lesser extent. More women than men. At the time, Merrin had been worried about how the population would get to viable numbers. He shrugged inwardly.

"Are you going to be a father in July?" Chris watched the expressions flitting across his face as he looked back at her.

"Yeah," he admitted reluctantly. Another thing that had been a total failure on his part. He hadn't seen Lily since that night. "Not sure how involved I'm going to be, though."

They turned as Frances came through the door, stopping as she saw Christine sitting by the bed.

"Hey," Adam said, pushing himself a little higher on the pillow behind him. He'd gotten to know the researcher at the order's safehold. "Any news?"

Coming into the room, Frances nodded, her gaze flicking to Chris and back to him. "Jerome's awake. Bob said he was going to make it."

Adam smiled in relief. "That's great."

"I'll, I should get going, I just wanted to see how you were," Chris said, getting to her feet. She had the unmistakable sense that the two had things to talk about that they wouldn't if she were there. She'd met the slim blonde girl when they'd moved to Kansas, all of the trainees had spent their first few weeks learning the basics of the wards and guards for most of the things they would be learning to hunt there. At the time, it'd seemed strange to her that Frances, Taylor and the older researchers had kept themselves separate from the hunters. Now, she understood.

"Thanks for coming to see me, Chris," Adam said uncomfortably. He liked Chris. Like her straightforward approach to everything. But she'd been there when he'd frozen up and he couldn't find a way to get past the feeling that the hunters still held it against him, even if only in small ways now. A lack of trust in him? He wasn't sure.

"Does Bobby know about Jerome?" Chris asked Frances as she paused by the door.

"Yes," Frances said. "They're with him now."

She turned back to Adam as Chris left and sat down in the vacated chair. "How's the pain today?"

"Better," he told her, lifting a hand carefully to his ribs.

* * *

_**Sweetwater, Texas**_

"Holy cow," Jack's voice breathed his ear and Dean frowned, adjusting the mike on the headset.

"Cut the chatter," he said in a low growl.

Rufus lifted a brow at his tone. They were hidden on the slight rise on the other side of the lake, the Qaddiysh and trainees about four hundred to the north on the same ridge as it descended to the head of the body of water.

In the mauve-tinted dusk, the camp was more than obvious, small fires scattered through the growing darkness on the bare ground between the few remaining brick buildings and the smooth water. Adjusting the field on the binoculars he held, Dean scanned the camp, jaw tightening.

"Razor wire around the prisoners."

Rufus nodded fractionally. "I got over a hundred on the outside. How do you want to do it?"

Staring down, Dean thought about that. He hadn't been able to pick out anyone that looked like the leader, and no matter what else they did, they'd need a diversion to get the people inside the wire out.

He had the medallion, tucked into one pocket. He carried it all the time now.

"I'll go in, get on top of that building," he decided abruptly, the glasses swivelling to the three-story, square brick building. "Start picking off the skinwalkers. They'll come looking for me."

"Some of 'em will," Rufus agreed, looking down at the camp. "Not all."

"No," Dean said. "But you give me ten minutes, see who's going where, and Penemue and Zoe set fire to those woods, on the other side of town." He lifted the glasses and Rufus copied him. "That'll draw away some more, and I think they'll shift – you can be sure of your targets. Jack, you'll stay here while Rufus and Perry cut through the wire and get those people out."

The soft assents came over the headsets. Rufus looked at Dean speculatively.

"You'll be a sitting duck up there," he said.

"They won't see me," Dean said, mouth twisting up as he put the binoculars down and dragged the medallion from his jeans pocket, slipping the chain over his head and turning his head to look at the older hunter coldly. "Just get them out, man."

Rufus watched him slither backwards down the side of the ridge, disappearing into the darkness. He didn't trust the blithe confidence or the faith Dean had in the efficacy of the pendant around his neck. But there was nothing he could do about either and he rolled over, picking up the glasses and returning them to the small pack, his voice a soft whisper.

"Alright, we got a plan, let's get going."

* * *

The M40 was the gun he'd learned to shoot long-range with, in Minnesota with Caleb and his father. It was long and heavy and in the hands of someone who knew what they were doing, perfectly deadly up to a thousand yards. Looking at the brick building as he skirted the camp, he knew he was well within that limit.

The grand staircase was gone, built of timber, most likely, Dean thought as he walked through the high-ceilinged main room to the back. The rear stairs had been built of steel and brick and they were still there. Climbing to the roof, he came out into darkness, the faint starlight enough to show him the parapet that ran around the edge. Moonrise was still hours away and it was two weeks from full. He didn't need additional light to see his targets against the fires that dotted the open ground.

The first shots seemed to go unnoticed by the pack, the victims falling and the sound coming after. Then he hit one standing in a group, watching as they stared at the fallen man in their midst, and the baying and howling and yelping filled the night air as they seemed to ripple, dropping to all fours, fur, long and unkempt or short and glossy, gleaming in the firelight covering them. Through the flat two-dimensions of the scope, he saw them turn en masse for the buildings of the town and smiled slightly, finger tightening smoothly on the trigger. Not an automatic, he worked the bolt steadily, picking off the animals that ran toward him, the heavy calibre silver bullets mostly blowing them apart, leaving big holes in their human forms as they transformed back.

He hadn't barricaded the roof door when he'd come through, and he heard it slam open, setting the rifle down unhurriedly and pulling out the .45, hitting the first three to cross the asphalt of the roof in a slow sweep, watching them fall and turn back into people.

Not _people_, the thought drifted. _Just monsters_.

More came out through the door and Dean shifted his position slightly, catching them on an angle for a clearer shot to the heart, the rounds pumping out efficiently, his fingers in his jacket pocket for the next magazine as he emptied the gun, ejected the spent clip and slammed the new one in, one flowing motion that didn't slow him down at all.

A whoomf went up to one side of the building and from the corner of his eye, he saw the flames leap through the woods, heard the howling and yipping change note on the ground and watched the distant fire reflected in the eyes of the dogs that burst through the door toward him. The auto fired smoothly, the rounds counted off in his head.

He'd just slammed the next magazine in when the man came through, reddish-brown hair brushing the top of the door-frame. Adjusting his aim automatically, Dean fired, watching the bullets punch into the man's bare chest, black holes distinct against the furred expanse of white flesh, none penetrating the heart. His eyes widened slightly as the man kept coming, the silver slugs emerging from the holes and dropping to the ground.

_That'll be him_, he thought distantly, his left hand cupping around his right as he gripped the gun tightly and aimed for the heart.

The man was in front of him in the fraction of a second it took to change the grip, one meaty, ham-sized fist closing around the barrel, shots fired in quick succession into his abdomen as the hand crushed Dean's fingers against the unyielding metal and ivory. He flicked his head to one side, feeling the graze of massive knuckles along his cheekbone and twisted slightly, weight and hip into the kick to the side of the knee, the skinwalker's fingers loosening enough for him to yank his hand and gun free.

The gun clicked, magazine and chamber empty and Dean tossed it behind him, eyes narrowing as he calculated all the possible means he had to tackle the man, more than a foot taller and twice his weight. The skinwalker's mouth stretched out into a ferocious smile.

It wasn't in his nature to accept defeat, no matter how impossible the situation appeared, and he backed a few steps, circling around, his hands flexing as he tried to assess the damage the man had done, nothing broken, blood flowing back and tingling as he worked them.

The attack was fast, as he'd expected. He had time to shift his weight to his left foot and then back to the right, dropping under the sledgehammer strike, shoulder hitting the ground and leg flashing out, the outside edge of his boot hitting the skinwalker's knee again, this time feeling a slight amount of give under the blow. Then he was rolling fast, the man's knee dropping onto the asphalt where he'd been with a crack he could hear over the snarling pack around him, a confused impression of long canine fangs and bristling hackles as he came up on his feet.

"Fast, little man," the first-born skinwalker said, turning to track him, hands lifted and spread out, fingers curled into talons.

Dean ignored him, watching the broad expanse of chest, twisting aside as the man moved again, long fingers skating over his side, the heel of his hand driving up into the heavy jaw, snap of teeth together, then the creaking snap of his ribs as the monster's elbow found his ribs and he threw himself sideways and down, rolling again, breath sucked painfully in through the grinding of the ends of the bones.

Yenaaldlooshii was on him when he came to his feet, one arm wrapped tightly around his ribcage and squeezing, feeling a sharp stab as a rib, broken and being bent further, pressed into his lung; the other forcing his head back, exposing his throat, his spine compressing under inexorable pressure. The skinwalker's head crackled and squealed as the bones elongated and flattened at the top, protruding out, cheekbones and nose and jaws stretching out toward him, narrowing, the teeth growing, clearly visible in the open mouth, tongue unrolling, saturated in saliva and panting the foetid breath of a predator over his face.

Dean rolled his eyes, ignoring the increasing pain as he fought against the monster's hold, seeing the mouth open wider, feeling the drops of saliva patter against his neck.


	16. Chapter 16 Hell Hound

**Chapter 16 Hell Hound**

* * *

_**Gallatin National Forest, Montana**_

"Still not getting a pulse," Nate snapped, resuming the CPR, his weight over Sam's chest held carefully. Joseph nodded, drawing another syringe of epinephrine and looking at Billy.

"Charge three hundred and sixty joules."

"Charging," Billy nodded, watching the charge climb on the machine next to him. "Three hundred and sixty joules."

Nate leaned back as Joseph injected the adrenalin and glanced at the monitor, taking the paddles from Billy.

"Clear."

Sam's body jerked up as the charge passed from one side of his chest to the other, his hair flopping back as he hit the ground. The sharp beep from the monitor startled them all, and Joseph stared at the small screen, his frame sagging in relief as the rhythm was established, the heart beating on its own.

"Christ!" Nate rocked back onto his heels, wiping the sweat from his face.

"No argument," Joseph commented, handing the paddles back to Billy and wrapping the three used syringes, tucking them into the trash container in one corner of the kit. "Keep an eye on him while I get this stuff packed away. Let me know if he looks like coming to."

Nate nodded, watching the strong pulse beating in the side of Sam's neck, his chest rising and falling steadily. He'd be dry as the desert when he woke, Nate knew from the way he'd felt when he'd come to, but they had water. He'd been two hundred yards from the box and only just within the leading edge of the goddess' personal field but every muscle and nerve felt beaten and cauterised; he couldn't imagine how Sam had stayed conscious long enough to shut the lid.

"Lee? You got a response from Shamsiel?" he said, touching the throat mike lightly.

"Negative," Lee's voice was indistinct and scratchy, possibly from the rock in between them, Nate thought, not a field interference. "No sign."

"Keep looking," Nate told him, stretching out his legs uncomfortably.

Billy walked stiffly back to them, looking down at Sam. "Good thing we didn't have to tell his brother that he'd kicked it here," he said.

Nate looked up at him and nodded. "Get your headset and go help Lee find the Watcher, we'll stay here until we have to move."

Billy turned away, going back to the SUV to grab a headset and jacket. Nate looked back down at Sam.

It was a damned good thing they didn't have to tell Dean that his brother was dead. It was going to be bad enough telling him about the rest.

"The arrest – his heart might be damaged," Joseph said, his voice quiet enough not to carry as he dropped cross-legged on the other side of Sam's prone body.

"Yeah, I know," Nate said. "Think it'll get worse?"

"I don't know," Joseph told him honestly. "Doc Hadley'll give us a better idea when we get him home."

* * *

Lee climbed the rock face, his eyes on the ground, noting the wide tracks in the thin soil on the top of the cliff's edge automatically. He looked around cautiously as Billy climbed up behind him.

"Bear around here somewhere," he said softly.

"Think it got Shamsiel?" Billy looked around, lifting his head slightly and smelling the cool air on the height of the ridge.

"Don't know, no blood here," Lee said, moving north along the edge of the cliff. He saw the broken branches where the bear had broken through, saw the tracks leading further up the ridge.

"Hey, found him," Billy said from behind him, and he turned to see the stocky, blond man leaning out over the edge. Moving up beside him, Lee looked down.

Twenty-three feet below them, Shamsiel lay on his back, the left leg of the tough hide pants he favoured cut away and a couple of thin branches, almost straight, bound together around his lower leg with the cut up leather strips. White teeth flashed against dark skin as he looked up at them.

"What took you so long?"

Billy sighed, shaking his head. "Can you get down there?" he asked Lee.

"Yeah, pretty sure."

"I'll get the others, we'll have to hoist him up here and then carry him down."

Lee nodded and looked along the edge for a handhold.

* * *

_**Sweetwater, Texas**_

The thick arm squeezed harder around him and Dean felt his air disappearing, his vision blurring then consciousness coming back with a slap as he felt a long, warm tongue slide softly up the side of his neck, the cooler drag of the teeth against his windpipe. Goddamn thing was going to bite him and that would be it, he thought in a panic, and why the fuck hadn't the medallion hidden him from the monster?

He forced his hand up, fingers stiffened, jabbing at the dog head's eyes and sucked in a breath as the skinwalker jerked back, the vice-grip around his ribs loosening slightly. The rattle of automatic fire distracted it further, and he felt his feet touch the ground again, the compression on his vertebrae easing off, giving him a second's relief from the pain.

The hot breath filled his mouth and nose and shifted to heat the skin of his throat and Dean heard the cannon boom of Rufus' revolver, felt a white heat plough into his side as the skinwalker dropped to the ground, dragging him down with it. The back of his head hit the asphalt and he screwed his eyes shut tightly, trying to hang onto the pinpoint of light through the growing darkness enveloping him, a hand gripping his arm and yanking him out from under the monster.

"Dean!" Rufus shouted at him, and he wanted to punch the sonofabitch, his side was on fire and his head was pounding.

"Dean," Rufus said again, his arm sliding under his shoulders, lifting him up.

Opening his eyes cautiously, he looked up at the hunter's worried face. "What the fuck happened to the hollow points, Rufus?" he asked sourly, coughing a little.

"Huh," Rufus said, sitting back on his heels, staring at him. "You're bitching? Now?"

"You shot me!"

Rufus' brows rose slightly. "Did not. Where?"

"Here!" Dean rolled onto his elbow, wincing as the movement dragged at the hole he could feel leaking his blood down through his clothes.

"In and out," Rufus told him, dismissing the injury after a moment's look under the man's jacket and shirt. "You'll live."

"That's the second fucking in and out on that side I've had in the last two years," Dean said disgustedly, letting the older man pull him to his feet. "I'm gonna look like Swiss cheese."

He looked around at the twenty or so dead bodies lying over the roof top. Most of them he'd accounted for before the leader had shown up, the rest were Rufus' work, stitched across with holes from the modified sub he carried everywhere.

"What happened?" Rufus looked down at the first-born skinwalker, the head still that of a dog – a coyote, he thought, frowning at it.

"Turned up and wanted to fight," Dean told him shortly, hobbling up to him, his hand pressed hard over his side. "The medallion had no effect on him and he had a few advantages."

Looking at the massive figure at his feet, Rufus blinked at the understatement. "Yeah, yeah, I can see that."

"Did you get the prisoners out?"

"Yeah, they had over ninety," Rufus said, turning back to look at him. "We've tested them all but we've gotta find some transport."

Dean nodded wearily. "Good, you go do that and get someone to take care of this."

"Got some whiskey in the truck –"

"Someone not you."

* * *

_**US-183 N, Texas**_

Rufus glanced in the backseat as he heard the groan again. "Zoe, how's he doing?"

"He's getting hotter," she said, the back of her hand resting over Dean's forehead. "Rufus, we need to stop, look at that wound."

"I agree," Penemue said from the passenger seat. "There must be infection."

_And it had come on fast_, Rufus thought uneasily. He pulled over on the shoulder of the pitted highway, watching Jack pull in behind him, both cars drawing under the shade of the trees that filled what had once been farmland.

"Alright, Penemue, need you in the back," Rufus said, getting out of the car and heading for the trunk. "Zoe, there used to be a creek, not more'n five hundred feet up the road, heading south-east. Get some clean water, as much as you can carry. Tell Jack to give you a hand with it."

"What do you want me to do?" The _Irin_ got out, opening the rear passenger door and looking down at the man lying along the back seat, noting uneasily that Dean's hair and skin was dripping with sweat.

"Gimme a minute," Rufus said from behind the raised lid of the trunk. "We need a cleared space, a fire, groundsheet and tents down. We're gonna have to stay here until this is cleared up."

Penemue nodded and walked to the pickup parked behind them.

Pulling out the medical kit, Rufus balanced the big box on the rim of the trunk well and opened it. The order's unguents were all there, which would help a lot, he thought. He'd need the Qaddiysh and Jack to get Dean out of the car once they were set up.

The survivors of the skinwalker's camp had gone with Perry, following the hunter along the mostly-cleared roads north. He and Jack had dropped back when Zoe had told him that Dean was running a fever.

Closing the box, he put it down beside the trunk and walked around to the rear door, leaning into the back as Dean muttered something at him.

"Not home, yet, son," he said in a low voice.

Dean's eyes were moving rapidly behind his closed lids. Fever dream. Or hallucination. Rufus shook his head slightly. He could feel the heat coming off the man's skin from a foot away. The creek water would be colder than anything they carried; they could get the heat in his body down that way if nothing else worked.

He drew aside the jacket and shirt Dean wore, grimacing as he saw the weeping, pinkish stains on the t-shirt beneath them. Lifting it carefully, he already knew what he was going to see, angry red lines radiating out from under the bandage and the bandage itself soaked through.

_Crap and more crap_, he thought furiously. Perry and Zoe had done the clean out of the wound, but they'd left something in there to have sparked all this so fast. Lifting an eyelid with his thumb, he saw the enlarged pupil. At least Dean was out for the moment, he realised, letting it drop. He'd give him something as soon as they got him into the camp.

"Rufus –"

He looked down in surprise, seeing the man's eyes open a little, trying to focus on him.

"Dean, you got an infection," he said quietly, catching hold of Dean's hand as he tried to touch the wound in his side. "Gonna have to open it up again, clean it out properly."

"S'hot," Dean slurred, his head turning from side to side. "Wh' the fuck are we?"

"'Bout a hundred miles north of Clinton," Rufus told him. "Heading home."

"You tell 'Lex I got hit?"

The words hit him low down in his stomach and he swallowed against the dryness of his mouth. "Sure, sure did, Dean."

"Don' worr' her."

"No, I won't." He looked out of the car, seeing the Qaddiysh laying out the groundsheet, a small fire sending curling ribbons of smoke into the air. "Listen, you need to rest, alright? Gotta get this cleaned out and you need to sleep."

"'Kay," Dean said, his eyes opening a little wider, then rolling back.

"You ready?" Rufus called softly and Penemue nodded, walking fast to the car.

It took them five minutes to get the blanket under Dean and lift him out, carrying him over to the clean groundsheet and setting him down near the tent. Zoe and Jack returned, two of the big canvas water carriers filled. Rufus set Zoe to boiling them as he knelt beside the unconsciousness man and pulled off the sweat-sodden jacket and plaid shirt.

The medical kit held a half dozen scalpels, sterilised in their packs and Rufus laid two out on the lid, along with packs of gauze, packed syringes and needles, an ampoule of broad-spectrum antibiotic and a thick, wide elastic bandage. He glanced up at Jack and Zoe, both hovering behind Penemue and looking down at Dean.

"Alright, you two, you'll have to miss out on this particular medical lesson," he said brusquely. "We'll stay here tonight, so go find some dinner and get it ready."

They nodded reluctantly, turning to get their rifles from the pickup and heading into the woods. Rufus looked at Penemue.

"In the kit there're sachets of goldenrod and purple cone," he said slowly. When the angel nodded in recognition, he gestured to the pot that was boiling over the fire. "Get another pot and soak them in boiling water, they have to be soft enough to smear."

The tee shirt was soaked, and Rufus cut it away, lifting the pieces carefully aside and tossing them on the fire. Penemue had filled another pot with the boiled water and he got to his feet when the herbs were in and soaking.

Rufus lifted the bandage and the smell hit them both; the hole in Dean's side thick with stinking yellow pus, red streaks spreading out under the skin of his abdomen from the infected wound. Dean moaned softly, trying to push Rufus' hand aside, and the Watcher caught it, pinning it down beside him.

Wiping away the stinking matter, Rufus felt his concentration narrow down to the hole and finding whatever was in it. As he waited for the boiled water to cool sufficiently to use, he loaded a syringe with morphine and injected it, the sharp spasms of muscle relaxing as the painkiller worked through Dean's body. Penemue checked his pupils, nodding when they didn't react to the light.

It was a matter of washing and wiping and palpating the pus out of the wound, and the two men worked together, not speaking, knowing what was required, their fingers and palms reddened and blistered from handling water and soaked dressings as hot as they could stand to clean out the infection.

* * *

Jack and Zoe returned as the last of the fluid was being flushed, Zoe taking the brace of rabbit from Jack and going to the other side of the fire to skin and dress them as Jack walked to Rufus.

When Dean's blood ran clear from the hole, Rufus nodded at Penemue. The Watcher lifted the man slightly, holding his back off the soaked matting underneath.

"Jack, grab this crap, build up the fire a bit more and burn it all," Rufus said tersely. "And get me some clean sheets from the kit."

He poured the saline through first, holding a clean dressing underneath, looking for debris to float out of the wound. There were a few bits, there'd been more with the pus when he'd forced it out, but anything left in there would only cause the same reaction again. The salt solution was pink as it ran out through the torn flesh on Dean's back, but clearer, no signs of the infected yellow matter or the clots of blackened blood that had come out at first.

"I think it's clean," he said, closing the bottle and picking up the other one. "Hold him hard, Penemue, out or not, he'll feel this."

The alcohol trickled into the wound and Dean arched up against the agonising bite, the fallen angel holding him tightly as Rufus kept pouring it through.

"Okay, that came out clear," the hunter said, screwing the top back on and wiping his face. "That stuff good and soft, Jack?"

"Yeah," he told him, bringing the slightly cooled cotton bags with their pulpy contents. Rufus set a clean sheet under Dean and spread the hot poultice against the exit wound. He set the other poultice against the entrance hole and nodded to the angel to lift Dean higher, wrapping a wide bandage around his torso to hold both in place.

"Get another lot into the water. I'll change this in two hours," Rufus told the ex-paramedic, tying off the bandage. He looked up at Penemue with a humourless grin. "Now all we have to do is get him into a sleeping bag."

* * *

"I can watch him for a while," Zoe said softly, ducking as she came into the small tent. "You need to rest, Rufus."

"Yeah, not going to argue that one," Rufus said, rubbing a hand over his face. "Fever hasn't broken yet," he told her, crabbing sideways out from beside Dean. "Keep him as cool as you can."

He gestured to the bottles of water lined up to one side of the tent and the small, wet towel that had been wrung out and draped over them.

"I'll just grab an hour," he said, looking back at Dean's face. For the moment, he was quiet, but he'd been thrashing around earlier, fever dreams that'd had him shouting in fury at someone, then weeping and shaking. He wouldn't want anyone to see him like that, Rufus knew.

"I'll be fine, take as long as you need," she said, moving awkwardly around Dean's legs to sit next to him.

"Get Jack or Penemue if he starts moving again," Rufus told her. "Don't need you getting knocked out."

She nodded and he backed out of the tent, watching her for a moment before he zipped up the door. She wasn't that big and there wasn't a lot of room to get out the way if Dean did start swinging again. He'd zipped the sleeping up as high as it would go, but it wasn't that much of a restraint. He walked to the fire, seeing the _Irin's_ eyes open in the firelight.

"Zoe's watching him," Rufus said quietly. "Keep an ear open in case."

The fallen angel nodded.

* * *

Inside the tent, Zoe settled herself beside Dean, lifting his head onto her lap, and smoothing back his hair as he muttered something softly, a frown drawing the dark brows together.

"It's okay, Dean," she said softly, reaching for a towel and tipping water over it as he shifted in the bag, his head turning to the side. "You're going to be fine."

His skin was heating again, she could feel the moisture in his hair, at the back of his neck and she pressed the cold towel down over his forehead.

"Alex?"

"It's alright," she said, her voice dropping a little as she moved the moist cloth over his face. "It's going to be alright."

He seemed to relax, brow smoothing out as she stroked it.

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Kansas**_

Jerome looked around the library, all the signs of the attack gone now, the warm, golden light filling the room and lighting the polished wooden tables just as he remembered. Sam wasn't there, nor Marla. The hunter had returned two days ago and gone straight to West Keep, under the care of Bob Hadley and Merrin, and Marla was spending most of her time with him, sharing the information the doctor had deemed it safe for him to exert his energy on, but, the legacy thought, needing also to be there, to help his with his recovery. The two had grown close, trying to decipher the prophet's transcriptions.

Jasper sat next to Katherine, and Felix was back as well, looking more frail, his faded blue eyes filled with determination. Oliver and Frances sat opposite them, and Bobby and Ellen had taken the chairs closest to his end of the table, the Qaddiyshin, Baraquiel and Shamsiel, seated on the other side.

"You're saying that the Grigori have the mirror with them?" he asked, looking at Jasper.

"Francesca has proof that the Grigori were in Russia when the palace was ransacked. And they would've known the power of that mirror," Jasper said, nodding. "If they have it with them, it would explain how they're controlling the cambion."

"Would the mirror even work with the young one? The boy? His power is enormous."

"He is young," Katherine reasoned. "Perhaps the threat is to the man and the boy behaves because he has an emotional bond with him?"

"Perhaps. Maybe. If," Jerome said, gesturing abruptly. "If it's true, it's still no help. We do not have their location, nor the location of the demon or the tablet."

_Or Chuck_, he added silently to himself. He'd come to be very fond of the writer over the last two and a half years. And he could imagine all too easily what Chuck was going through now.

"We wanted to run the spell again," Bobby said, looking at him. "See if anything's changed."

"What makes you think it has?" Jerome asked him, glancing at Ellen. She shrugged.

"Nothin' … that we know of," Bobby said truculently. "But it won't hurt, will it?"

He sighed and shook his head. "No. It won't hurt."

"One goddess has been recaptured and locked away," Baraquiel said, looking from Jerome to Bobby. "The other is moving west and north and Michel and Francesca have given the location for the first vampire as being in the Wasatch Mountains in Utah. We need to get a team there to intercept Nintu, before she frees Usiku."

"Dean'll be back in a day," Ellen said, an edge to her voice. "He'll want to organise that, along with what needs to be done about the Grigori base, if they can find it."

"We don't have much time," Baraquiel argued. "And Rufus said on the radio that Dean had been shot."

"Doesn't change a thing." Bobby backed Ellen up, looking at the Qaddiysh with a set jaw. "He'll still be making that decision."

He watched Baraquiel and Shamsiel exchange a fast look, sighing slightly. There was no one else who could make those kinds of decisions here. At least, not risking screwing up whatever Dean might've had in mind to handle it.

At the back of his mind, Rufus' disquieting disclosures about what Dean'd said while under the influence of the fever lingered. He'd seen him under pressure, knew what that looked like. But the fact was that Dean hadn't really been around much since he'd gotten back from Iowa, and had been distant with both him and Ellen, focussing his attention on the keep, on rebuilding and finding the information to shut down Hell, to get Chuck and the tablet back, on finding the Grigori.

When Sam had died, in Cold Oak, Dean had been the same, he thought now. Driven. Desperate. So lost to everything that he'd made the deal without thinking it through. He'd done the same thing when Alex had been dying in Chitaqua, he realised slowly. Made the deal with Death as if the entity could'nt've taken them both right there and then. Was that what he was doing now, he wondered? Looking for another impossible way to get her back? Was that why he wasn't letting go? Rufus had told them about the apartment, not a thing changed or packed up or moved.

"Oliver," Jerome said, breaking through Bobby's unsettled thoughts. "Get the spell set up in the situation room and could you tell Father Emilio what we're doing?"

"You want to do it now?" Jasper asked, glancing at his watch.

"Yes," Jerome said, looking at Bobby. "Might as well see if anything has changed."

* * *

"You talked to Dr Hadley," Sam insisted, moving slowly down the staircase, keeping up easily with his brother who was listing to one side with every downward step.

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean –" Dean said, trying to gather his arguments.

"It means that there's no permanent damage done," Sam interrupted impatiently. "It's nothing like you had."

"Doesn't mean you're ready to go out there, Sam," Dean said, slowing at the curve in the staircase, the pull and bite of the holes in his side more pronounced with his weight on one foot. "We don't even know if she's still heading in the same direction."

"Michel confirmed it yesterday, Dean," Sam bit out, ignoring the staccato beat against his chest as he gripped the balustrade. "We don't have much time; one of us needs to get out there."

"Not you."

"You're not interested!"

"Right about that," Dean admitted readily. "Bobby said that the spell showed nine markers now," he added, sucking in a breath as he reached the bottom of the stairs and waited for Sam. "And that Boston isn't flickering around anymore."

"But they can't find it on the large scale map," Sam said, walking slowly after his brother as they crossed the situation room. "Which means it's shielded somehow."

"If I can't get to Chuck, I'll go after the hell hound," Dean said, shrugging carelessly as he eased his way up the steps to the library.

"Through the gate no one's located?"

"There are other ways into the borderlands."

"You're not going alone," Sam told him softly. Dean looked back at him, a lop-sided smile not reaching his eyes.

"I already had this conversation with Rufus, Sam."

"You'll have it again, not just with me."

"No. I won't."

Turning away, he walked to the end of the table, sitting down with a silent sigh of relief. The infection had gone, well and truly, by the time they'd crossed from Oklahoma into Kansas, but he felt weak, exhaustion just a few steps away at any time. The doctor had said it would pass, provided he got some rest now. He'd agreed blandly and ignored the advice, seeing Liev first, then Elias and Nate, then going over to check on Jackson and the rebuilding at the farms. It was taking its toll, he acknowledged unwillingly to himself. He was looking forward to getting through this meeting, back to the keep and into a bed.

"We ran the location spell again," Bobby said to him without preamble. "Showed nine markers this time."

"Not another tablet?" Dean asked, glancing at Jerome.

"No, we don't think so," the legacy answered. "Something else with Metatron's signature but we're not sure why it didn't appear on the previous attempts."

"Where is it?"

"In southern Colorado," Ellen said, leaning on the table. "There was an earth tremor in the area a few days before, it might've changed something in the geological structure holding whatever this thing is."

"What about Boston?" Dean asked Jerome, pushing aside the thought of another mystery for the moment. There'd be time to deal with the scribe's other works after Hell was closed.

"The signal is steady but only on the city itself," Jerome said, rubbing a finger over his brow. "When we moved to the larger scale map, it disappeared."

"Local shielding, Sam said."

"Possibly," Jerome admitted. "Most likely a spell the demon uses to deflect attention from whatever he has set up on this plane."

"Nintu is heading for Utah, and we have a location for the first vampire," Baraquiel cut in. "There is a very small time window for us to intercept her at that location."

Dean looked back at him, considering the angel's ill-concealed impatience. He was right, of course. His dreams had been filled with the dark goddess since Iowa, with the increasingly ominous threat she represented to everything they'd built.

"Peter and Elias can take point," he said, glancing up the table at the two hunters. They nodded, expecting the orders. "Penemue, Joseph, Vince and Lee go along."

It was a major pain that almost all the women were out of action now, he thought, doubling up the men's workload. Nothing anyone could do about it. He'd revised the worklists as much as possible.

Somewhere deep, feeling eddied and he ignored it, focussing his thoughts back on the discussion.

"That acceptable?" he asked, looking at the Qaddiysh.

"Very," Baraquiel said, leaning back and looking at the hunters. "When can you leave?"

"We'll get our gear loaded and go tonight," Peter told him. "What about Michigan? Any word from Boze or Jo?"

Dean looked around at Bobby as the old man grunted.

"Confirmed pack of twenty five," Bobby said acerbically, frustrated by the number of problems and the distances between them. "They can't get into the camps, but they're attacking in daylight and the fields aren't getting planted."

"What do they need from us?"

"Boze asked if Franklin could take a bunch of his boys up, go on the offensive."

"We don't need them here, not at the moment," Dean said, considering the request. "Yeah, send them over, tell Franklin to leave a couple of his people there when they're done, train up the people in Tawas."

Ellen nodded, making a note on the pad she had in front of her. "We need another team to get down south, look at the fields and gins for cotton."

He felt a small lurch in his stomach as he nodded, driving the memory back and down. "How thin will that leave us here?"

She looked at him. "Depends on how many and who you send."

"Drew and Riley," Dean said, thinking through who was left here. "And Kelly and those people he's trained from the bunch Elias brought in." He rubbed a hand over his face. "That leaves you, Rufus and Bobby to look after things here."

"Really?" Ellen arched a brow at him. "And you'll be –?"

Dean straightened up in the chair, ignoring her and looking at Jasper and Katherine. "You said there were other ways to get to the borderlands of Hell. I need to know what they are."

"Dean –" Bobby started to say, eyes narrowing beneath the brim of his cap.

"No," Dean snapped. "We can't keep hoping there's gonna be something more in the transcripts of the tablet." He looked around the scholars sitting at the table. "You've been through all of what Chuck wrote, haven't you?"

The men and women shifted their gazes, to the table, to the shelving against the walls as they nodded assent.

"If there's a good way to get in to get the trial started, it's on a part of the stone that Chuck didn't get to before he was taken," Dean continued, his voice deepening slightly. "But we have no way of finding Crowley or Chuck or the tablet. We do know what has to be done to begin the trials," he said, turning to look at Bobby and Ellen, knowing their arguments, the counters ready in his mind. "And we have to get started on this, before it's too late. We've got something that'll kill the dog –"

"Might kill the dog," Bobby interjected angrily.

"Will kill Cerberus," Shamsiel spoke up, looking from the old man to the keep's leader. "The sword will kill anything hell spawned, except for the archdemons."

"And we know what has to be done," Dean said, as if the pair hadn't spoken, looking around the table again. "So, what I need to know is how to get there."

Sam stared around the table in the silence that followed. No matter that Dean was probably right, he couldn't believe that no one was going to argue with his brother.

"Not alone, Dean," he said into the quiet. "I'm coming with."

"Fine," Dean said dismissively, lifting a shoulder in a half-shrug at him. He looked at Felix. "You said that the guides could take us to the other planes."

The old man glanced uneasily at Jerome. "Yes, but the price might be –"

"I don't care what the price is," the hunter bit out caustically. "How do we summon one of these things?"

"Ah … well, I have a ritual for one of the Crows," Felix hedged. "But they're territorial, you see, and you'd have to go –"

"Just get me the ritual and where we have to do it, as soon as possible," Dean cut him off, impatience riddling his voice. "The only other priorities here are the Grigori – finding either of the locations in this country – and finding Chuck."

"Have you heard from Castiel?" Father Emilio asked quietly, from his position near the hearth.

Dean's expression darkened. "No."

"He had a summoning spell, for another angel," Oliver said tentatively. "He summoned an angel called Balthazar here when we needed the holy oil –"

"We're not looking for help from Heaven," Dean said and the warning was explicit in the harshness of his voice, in the flatness of his expression. "Every time they're involved, they screw it up worse. Just get the information about the guide."

* * *

Bobby waited in the shadows beside the door, straightening up as Dean came out, alone, as he'd hoped.

"Dean."

Turning to look at him, Dean let out a gusty exhale, forcibly tempering the irritation he could feel bubbling up.

"How's the side?" Bobby asked, walking over to him.

"It's fine," he said, looking at his watch.

"Didn't look so fine, watching you hobble up the stairs."

"It'll be fine," he amended. "Happy?"

"No," Bobby growled. "I'm not fucking happy. You're throwing yourself at this like it's the only thing you go left to do, not even thinking about doing it the smart way – that's not like –"

"Bobby," Dean cut through, holding up a hand. "If I shut down Hell, half the problems are solved, right?"

"'_Test unto death'_, the transcript says, Dean," Bobby said, dragging in a breath. "That's not fifty-fifty."

Dean looked away, shrugging. "So, someone else'll have to shut up Heaven. We got plenty of good –"

"Dean, she's dead, you can't bring her back," Bobby interrupted, his voice low and earnest. "An' throwing yourself –"

"I know she's dead," Dean cut him off, his voice low and harsh, his expression flattening out to a cold stare. "I fucking well know that." He dropped his gaze for a moment, staring at the ground, as the walls of his mind bowed under the pressure of keeping it all held back, all held in.

"You think this is about trying to find a way to get her back? Or thinking I'm looking for some way to check out? It's not," he grated, looking back at the older man. "I've had it with this weight, Bobby, I'm fucking sick and tired of carrying everything and getting nothing back. I've paid, Bobby. I've paid with every fucking thing I ever wanted. I've paid enough! If I can shut up the gates, and get that squared away, everyone here, everyone left, has a chance to get on with it without the odds being stacked against them. That's all I want now."

"Dean –"

"No." Dean shook his head. "There's nothing else to say. You – and Rufus and Ellen – you of all people should know what I'm feeling, what I'm doing."

He turned away and walked up the stairs to the illusion-covered road, finding his way to the Impala.

Bobby stood in front of the order's door, listening to his footfalls die away in the distance, the engine of the black car rumbling to life and the car pulling out. He did know, at least partly, what Dean was feeling. That was what scared him.

* * *

_**I-64 E, Indiana. May, 2013.**_

The headlights showed another gaping crevasse in the concrete road, and Dean slowed, swearing softly under his breath and shifting into reverse, twisting around to look for the exit ramp they'd passed.

"I don't know why we don't just try the secondary roads," Sam said, leaning back in the seat.

Ignoring him, Dean found the ramp and pulled off, following the line of battered hulks that had been swept from the canted road slowly until he could see a clear road heading east.

Sam was getting used to the silences, pressing on anyway, hoping that eventually he'd hit a topic that his brother would talk about.

"We should look around Boston, before we try this," he said as the headlights showed a remarkably clear stretch of two-lane highway. What had once been a two-lane highway and now bore a distinct resemblance to a gravel access road, anyway. "With the gun, killing Cerberus would be a sure thing."

Dean exhaled. "Ninety square miles, Sam," he said thinly. "That's why we're not wasting time looking around Boston. Over half a million people used to live there."

"We could try the spell there," Sam suggested. "Maybe the shielding –"

"Would be less effective the closer we got? Come on."

"You know what we're doing, right?" Sam turned to look at him, profile just visible in the dim lights on the dash. "We're making another deal."

"I know."

"And that's okay with you? After everything that's happened?"

"No." Dean eased off the accelerator, flicking a sideways glance at his brother. "No, it's not. But I got nothing else to go with right now."

"We could go look for the gun –"

"And even if, by some miracle, we found the house, Sam, what do you want to do? Run in there waving our little black swords and demand it back?" Dean snapped at him, his patience gone with the argument. "King demon, two or more of the Grigori, who knows how many nephilim and cambion – we think there're a couple of each but we don't know that – and we're going to launch a frontal assault?"

Subsiding against the passenger window, Sam didn't respond. Frontal assaults had been Dean's specialty … before.

"You want me to drive for awhile?" he asked a moment later.

Dean frowned. "No."

"Just asking, in case your side is hurting, or you want to sleep or anything," Sam clarified the offer placatingly.

"No, I'm good."

"Rufus said you weren't getting much sleep."

There was a long silence, then Dean glanced at him. "You got something to say, Sam? Get it out."

"I'm worried about you," Sam said slowly. "We could've taken another week, waited until you'd healed up a bit more. We go in there and you're not right …"

"I'm fine."

"No. You're not," Sam said abruptly. "You haven't been fine since Iowa and you–"

The car swerved to the shoulder, tyres squealing when they left the tar and sliding on the rough surface of the road as Dean braked and stopped.

"We're gonna get this straight here and now," he said, turning and looking at Sam. "You're here against my better judgement, not because I want you here. I am not fucking interested in personal conversation, not now, not ever. I want to get to New York, call that fucking guide, get into Hell and kill that fucking dog. That's it. That's the extent of what I want to talk about – you got that?"

Sam stared at him, heart still pounding a little at the suddenness of the stop, at the look on his brother's face.

"Yeah, I got it."

"Good," Dean said, turning back to the wheel and starting the engine. "Cause if you say another word about anything else, you're walking home."

He pulled out, foot heavy on the accelerator and reached across to the stereo, jamming his finger on the play button. The music filled the car, loud and heavy and insistent and Sam closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against the glass of the window beside him. _Just like old times_.

* * *

_**US-50 W, Colorado**_

The pickup and SUV were parked off the side of the road, half-hidden beneath the rapidly spreading forest. Vince and Lee stood next to them, guns loaded and held. A little deeper under the trees, Penemue crouched beside a small pool, staring into the dark, reflective water, waiting for an image to appear. Elias, Joseph and Peter watched and listened to the woodland.

The Qaddiysh sighed as he failed to pick up any trace of the goddess, turning his thoughts to the mountains in France instead, calling the image of the lit table in the situation room of the Chambre d'Ombres, the chapter of the Litteris Hominae, and Michel, the group's tall, lanky programmer. The image appeared immediately, the water clouding under the surface as it became clearer, the table with its lit markers showing the progress of the dark woman as she traversed the mountains north of them.

"She's not far ahead," Penemue said in a whisper. "But its high, a very high twisting road that has been battered and broken."

Elias rubbed an eyebrow. "You see any signs, uh, road signs?"

"I see a nine."

"Ninety-two," Elias nodded. "Twists through the mountains east of American Fork, the cave system is on the northern end of the route."

"We'll be too late," Peter said, his shoulders slumping.

"Maybe, maybe not. Cross-country is very difficult through there," the auburn-haired hunter said, turning to look back at Penemue. "Anything else in the magic mirror?"

"No." The Qaddiysh got to his feet, tugging at the light down jacket he wore. He found the westernised clothing too close-fitting and uncomfortable.

"You want to travel after nightfall?" Peter looked at Elias.

"No, not really," Elias said with a sigh. "Country looks empty, but it won't be, and lights are a give-away for miles. But I'm not sure we got a choice."

He looked at the sky. "Tonight's full moon, it'll rise late, after eleven. We'll get some grub, some sleep and take off when it rises, should be able to travel some distance using it."

Peter nodded, waiting for the Qaddiysh to precede him from the clearing, his gaze and gun on the woods as he backed out after him.

* * *

Under the moonlight, the landscape was reduced to a flat two-dimensional chiaroscuro; colour bled out leaving only light and shadow, the road climbing between blocks of charcoal and silver. Peter watched the darkness as Vince drove, the dark-blue SUV almost invisible on the black asphalt.

"What's that?" Lee asked from the rear seat, leaning close to the window on the driver's side.

"What?"

"There, Vince, stop," the young man's voice rose slightly. "Lights."

Looking out over the folded hills and deep valleys, they saw them, unflickering against the side of the peak, golden in a world of black and white.

"Settlement?" Peter turned to look at Vince, one brow lifted. "Rufus and Bobby have been speculating of many more survivors there are out there than what we've found?"

"Maybe," Vince answered, glancing back at the pickup stopped behind them. "Whatever it is, we should check it out."

"We might not have time," Peter said.

"We'll have to make time," the younger hunter said, pulling on the handbrake and getting out of the car. "Gimme a minute."

Peter watched him walk back to the truck, calculating and recalculating the distances in his head. There was an extremely good possibility they would miss Nintu anyway, at the rate she travelled. They couldn't afford any more delays.

Vince was back in less than two minutes, the door swinging open. "We'll look on the way back," he told Peter, releasing the brake. "I set the trip counter at the turnoff to get the ninety-two right – we'll use the counter number to find them again." He wrote down the number under the mileage counter and tucked the notebook back in his jacket pocket. "Good eyes, Lee."

"Did Elias think it was survivors?" Peter asked, another possibility occurring to him as they continued up the pitted and cracked road.

"No," Vince said, his voice dropping low as he glanced across at him. "No, he thought it might be something else."

* * *

_**Fort Lee, New Jersey**_

The skyline was gone, Sam realised belatedly as they drove toward the river from the Jersey side. Aside from the lights that had always delineated it, even the shapes, dark against the brilliantly starred night sky were broken and short, nothing over a few stories seemed to be standing now.

As if he'd said it aloud, Dean nodded abruptly, pulling to one side of the road as they came closer. Only the shells of the buildings remained, brick and steel lifting their broken bones into the darkness.

"Streets'll be full of crap," he told Sam, nosing the black car in between the side of a low building and the wreckage of a bus that had mounted the sidewalk, both overgrown with weeds, grass pushing through the cracked concrete and saplings rising from the building's interior. "We'll walk in from here."

"Where do we have to go?"

"Anywhere on Manhattan, Felix said," Dean called back over his shoulder, getting out and locking the door and walking back to the trunk.

"I thought guides could go anywhere?" Sam got out and locked the passenger door, walking around the car.

"Apparently not. The lore says they're territorial." Pulling out the gear bag, Dean passed the flashlight and a shotgun to his brother. "Stay close, I'm wearing the medallion, but I don't know how big the field is."

It'd covered the car while he was driving, he thought, lifting the bag onto his shoulder. The only time he'd tried to use it to protect someone else, he'd been lying on top of her. The memory was dismissed instantly and he closed the trunk.

"Where are we?" Sam looked around the thick woods that lined both side of the road, overwhelming the buildings and piles of rubble and cars.

"Fort Lee, I think," Dean told him, walking east of north and skirting the piles of rusted metal that blocked most of the road. "George Washington Bridge." He gestured vaguely ahead of them. The automatic was in his hand and he watched the blackness under the trees to either side of them, the moonlight bright enough to see the obstacles on what little remained of the road.

"Nature didn't waste any time," Sam commented as he looked around. Another ten years and it wouldn't be a road any longer, just a series of broken and eroded pieces of concrete, meaningless artefacts under the canopy of the forest.

The bridge, a dual level suspension bridge with towers at either end, spanning the Hudson River, seemed mostly intact. Both men stood by the long approach and looked at it, the lower level stygian even with the moonlight.

"Guessing we'll take the top?"

Dean snorted. "You want to see what's living down there, be my guest."

"Nah, I'd like to live."

The approach was an almost solid wall of crushed and twisted vehicles, enmeshed together and uniformly rusted. Setting the bag further over his back, Dean exhaled and looked for a place to get over or through, moving slowly along the obstruction.

"You think this was from when it started?" Sam asked, staring at the cars, trucks and buses that had been mashed together.

"Probably," Dean said disinterestedly, finding a place to climb over the truck and bus frames that seemed to have brought the traffic to a final halt here. "Had a hell of a fender-bender right here and all the people that were trying to get out behind it had nowhere to go."

He looked back down at Sam. "Come on, there's a way through here."

Sam followed him up the side of the bus. There was nothing left but the frames, some of the panels, the doors. Everything that could be consumed had been. He stopped next to Dean, on the top of a semi cab that had somehow jacknifed over the roof of the bus.

Ahead of them was a sea of twisted metal wrecks, three or four cars high in some places, slewed across the lanes and jammed against the metal railings, torn apart or crushed together.

"Crap," Dean said, with feeling.

"They'll all be like this, won't they?" Sam asked him, looking down the river. "The tunnels and the other bridges?"

Dean nodded. "Yeah, I think so. Everyone panicked."

"What about a boat?"

"Current's too strong unless we can find one with a motor that's still working and some fuel for it." Dean said, looking across to the side. "Supposed to be foot and bike paths on the sides, we'll try for those."

He shifted across the top of the cab, picking his way down over the long fixed tray and the steeper slope of the trailer, making sure of every foothold as he stared down at the protrusion of sharp steel edges that were all that was left of the cars underneath.

"Watch your footing," he warned his brother, unnecessarily, Sam seeing the same potential for impalement.

Within the first couple of hundred yards from the approach to the tower, both pedestrian and bike paths had been covered by cars attempting to force their past the initial crash, but further along, there were less obstacles, and they were able to move around them. The concrete had split and cracked, steel reinforcement mesh and rebar curving up like daggers from the crumbling holes. The bridge was a little under a mile in length, and Sam saw a line of light against what was left on the island as they crossed finally into Manhattan.

"Anywhere here?" he asked, leaning back against the last steel pylon.

"That's what they said," Dean agreed absently, dropping the gear bag and unzipping it, pulling out the bowl and the packets of herbs and powdered stones. He mixed the contents together in the brass bowl and drew the long black blade, brow rising a little at the fine-edge cut it made on the back of his forearm. Sam watched as the blood dripped into the bowl.

"You'd better bind that up, the ghouls are feverish in the city tonight."

The voice was deep and thick and rich with nuance and both men swung around to see a man standing behind them, dark eyes hooded beneath black brows, the glint of white teeth between fleshy lips in an expression that wasn't entirely friendly.

Dean lowered the point of the long knife, sliding it casually back through his belt as he wound a clean dressing over and around the cut and studied the guide. Five foot ten, at most, but stocky, plenty of muscle on the wide shoulders and around the bull neck. Jet-black hair fell thick and straight, brushed back from the forehead, and his skin was olive-toned, a heavy shadow over jaw and cheeks and throat.

"You're a Crow?" Sam asked, straightening against the post, one of the Irin's knives in his hand, point held loosely down.

The man laughed. "I'm _the_ Crow, my friends," he said, genuine humour flashing in the dark eyes for a moment then disappearing. "Kopaki, guide of guides."

"We need a gate to the borders of Hell," Dean said shortly. "And a ride back out when we're done."

"Is that all?" Kopaki gestured expansively around them. "What about my head on a plate? My firstborn? My fucking eye teeth?"

"Is there a problem?" Sam asked, stepping toward the guide.

"The Winchesters would like a ride in and out of Hell, and he asks if there's a problem," he said to the sky, rolling his eyes.

"You know us?" Sam took another step closer to the Crow.

"Not personally, of course, but yes, I've heard of you." He looked from Sam to Dean. "The King of Hell is looking for you – quite diligently, I might add."

"Can you do it or not?" Dean asked pointedly, looking down at the bag at his feet. "I got another ritual for a reaper, if you can't."

"Oh, I can do it." The guide looked around. "But it will cost."

"Naturally." Dean's lip curled up. "What's the price?"

"Where do you want to go – exactly?"

"River Acheron."

"There's a gate that will take you there in Texas," Kopaki said, glancing at Sam. "Austin. I'll meet you there."

"No," Dean told him tightly. "Somewhere around here, somewhere close."

The Crow looked at him, his expression darkening. "The only gate close to here is in Boston, my friend. I suggest most vehemently that you pick another."

"Why?" Dean felt Sam's gaze on him, ignoring the tacit warning in it.

"It is not a safe place to cross." The guide glanced around the silent street. "It is the personal gate of the King."

"Crowley's gate's in Boston?" Dean asked, turning to lift a brow at Sam. "That suits us just fine."

"Dean –"

"How much?" Dean cut him off, looking at Kopaki.

"You will grant me a favour, when I have need of you."

From the expression on his face, Dean realised that the seemingly innocuous demand wasn't going to be that easy. "What kind of favour?"

"Any kind I need," Kopaki said, his mouth stretching out in a smile that went nowhere near his eyes. "That's the price."

"Dean!" Sam cut in between them, staring at his brother. "A moment?"

"Of course," the Crow said, moving away. "Take as long as you like."

Glancing over his shoulder, Sam watched him walk to the corner, then turned back to Dean. "A favour? Anything? Are you kidding me?"

"You got an alternative? 'Cause I'm not seeing one here," Dean said tersely, staring back at him. "We need a way in – and if it's Crowley's personal gate, maybe we can find out something about where he's living when he's topside?"

"Maybe we're walking into a trap to be served up to Crowley!"

"Decider?" Dean grinned humourlessly at his brother as he held his fist over his palm.

"Christ, don't –" Sam turned away, shaking his head. "This is not what we should be doing, not now, not after everything you did to get me free, Dean."

He looked back at him, seeing the mulish expression on his face, knowing his brother wasn't going to listen to him.

"We can figure out another way," he tried again.

"No," Dean said, his eyes flat and dark. "There's no other way. Jerome, Jasper … you – you would've found it by now if there was."

"We haven't given them much time –"

"We don't have much time, Sam," Dean said, half-turning as frustration finally broke through. "We won't get more time. Look at what we're dealing with here," he added in a low voice. "Cas, grabbed and dragged back to Heaven – we don't know what's going on up there, but we can't count on their help. Crowley's got Chuck translating the tablet and the Qaddiysh say that the tablet itself holds some magnitude of power that could probably wipe us all out, even without the others. We didn't kill those sons of bitches, and there are more of them on the way east now the snow's gone. Some angel told Father McConnaughey that Hell had to be shut before Crowley could get any further and before the archdemons got loose … we are _out_ of time. The only thing we got a shot at is closing the gates of Hell. That's it."

Listening to him, Sam felt a sinking recognition that he was right. They never had any goddamned time to get themselves off the back foot and take the offensive away from whatever it was that was trying to kill them, kill everything.

"It doesn't matter that it's a crappy deal – fuck, that's all I do is crappy deals," Dean said, and Sam heard the recognition in Dean's voice as well. "It's the _only_ deal. I gotta take it."

"I'm going in with you," he said, turning around to face his brother. "No arguments."

Dean shook his head. "No argument."

"Go ahead." He looked bleakly at him.

* * *

_**Alpine Scenic Highway, Wasatch Mountains, Utah**_

The concrete paths and tourist signs had long since gone. Peter looked up at the mountainside, the shadowed overhangs and fissures clearly visible in the pale dawn light, and drew the black knife the Qaddiysh had given him. Neither vampire nor goddess was hell-born but the edge was keen and he had no doubt that it would take off the head of anything that came his way.

Lee and Joseph had drawn the short straws and were remaining with the vehicles. He could hear the crunch of the bootsoles of the Qaddiysh, Vince and Elias behind him, the box heavier on his back than it had been half an hour ago, and the mile and a half climb to the caves ahead of them.

Here and there, the remains of the chain that had marked the entrance to the cave system lay rusting on the ground. Winter hadn't quite left the mountains, and the bitter air blew past them, moaning in the stalagmites and stalactites that were visible from the entrance.

"You feel anything?" Elias looked Penemue. The Qaddiysh shook his head.

"No, it feels empty, dead."

"Better make sure of that," Peter said, turning on his flashlight and heading inside. It didn't take that long to investigate the interconnected tunnels and caverns. And the prison of Nintu's first vampire was obvious, the rock wall at the side of the farthest cave smashed into pieces, a pool of dark blood painting the floor beside it.

"She's freed him and given her blood," Penemue said softly, looking down at it. He tipped his head back, his breath rushing out in a long, tired exhale. "We were too late."

Elias looked around the cave. One set of tracks led out through the thin, glittering sand. A man's tracks. Not big, but distinctive. At the end of the toes, long claws left their indentations in the sand.

"Where is she heading next?"

"To free Raat," Peter told him. "Alain calculated the prison to be in the very north of Canada, above the Arctic Circle."

"Gives us some time," Elias mused. "What about the goddess, will she come back this way?"

"They haven't found the prisons of the other first born monsters," Penemue said with a shrug. "She might."

He looked at the hunters. "What does mean for our priorities now?"

Elias glanced at Peter. "We'll take a look at those lights."

"Yes," Peter said, nodding. "Then back to Lebanon."

* * *

_**Nahant, Massachusetts**_

Trees crowded close to the shoulders of the road, hiding the stone and brick residences still standing, their roots reaching out, cracking and lifting the slabs of asphalt and tilting them over. Dean grimaced with every hard, lurching crunch of the wheels as they rose and fell over the obstructions, his breath hissing out with each scrape of the oil pan and exhaust pipe over the jagged edges.

"How much further?"

"Half a mile," Sam said, leaning toward the windshield, eyes narrowed. It'd taken them five hours to drive the two hundred and twenty miles, the first two hours finding a way out of New Jersey, and the last two negotiating the devastation that had once been Boston. He could see the darkened patches on Dean's shirt, the sheen of perspiration still coating his face as he struggled to find a less punishing way through for the car.

"That's it." Sam pointed to the left, where the cracked and fallen pillars of a driveway were just visible through the saplings and undergrowth.

The black car bumped over the remains of the iron gates, Dean swearing softly under his breath as he eased them over, hoping that nothing sharp was going to take his tyres out. He hadn't been able to see the gates lying on the ground when he turned in.

Branches and burgeoning foliage brushed the sides of the car as they moved slowly down the narrow road. Dean followed the barely-there curve and pulled up when the headlights revealed two walls of a half-collapsed brick building, the sharp tang of salt on the light onshore breeze filling the car as the engine ticked in the silence.

They got out, Sam looking around as Dean went for the trunk, this time to retrieve the long, black knives. The medallion was warm against his skin and his thoughts were remote, detached from what they were about to do.

"We need to hurry, darkness and that pendant will protect us from their view for now, but once the sun has risen, even the medallion may not hide us all."

Sam's head snapped around as Kopaki spoke next to him, his heart racing at the unexpectedness of the guide's appearance. Dean glanced at the Crow, gesturing with the knife.

"Your party, lead on," he said coldly, passing one of the black metal blades to Sam and tucking his gun into his jacket pocket. He wasn't sure if it would do anything down there – wherever down there was – but it was a reassuring weight he was loathe to leave behind.

The Crow moved to the cliff edge, and began to pick his way down to the water, the moonlight turning the grey sand beach to charcoal and lighting the white foam on the crests of the small waves that rippled along its edge. Aside from the soft sough of the sea as it touched the shore, the night was silent, the grinding of their boots over the coarse sand loud in their ears.

"What is this place?" Sam asked in a low voice, and Kopaki turned at once, dark eyes narrowed in warning, one finger pressed against his mouth.

At the end of the beach the cliffs jutted out, not very high but rough, worn into sharp-edged twists and hollows by the relentless action of the waves, the softer rock eroded, leaving harder pitted cores that caught on their clothes and chewed through their boot soles. They clambered around two small headlands, interleaved with tiny beaches, before the cave appeared, and the Crow stopped.

"The gate is in there," Kopaki said, his voice barely a whisper. "I go no further."

"Bullshit!" Dean whispered back, leaning threateningly close to the guide. "Deal was in and out!"

Catching Dean's hand, and surprising the hunter with the strength of that grip, the Crow traced a symbol on the inside of his wrist. Dean looked down, feeling a burning sensation crawl over his skin as a thin line of greyish light followed the fingertip, flaring momentarily when the drawing was complete then fading away.

"When this glows, you will know it's time to come back," Kopaki leaned close and breathed against his ear. "The gate will open and let you out and I will be here."

He nodded, pulling back uncomfortably from the guide and turning for the cave mouth.

"This is a bad idea," Sam muttered as they crossed out of the moonlight and into the darkness.

Dean didn't disagree. He stopped for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the black interior of the cave, listening to the murmur of the water as it washed in and out of the cave's floor. Ahead, he could see a shimmer, against the rock walls, a faint reddish outline.

"There it is," he told Sam and strode forward.

Following his brother through the shimmer, Sam flinched as his body seemed to erupt in flame, gasping as everything disappeared – light, sound, touch and feeling – his stomach cramping up with the vertiginous wrench that spun him around, arms flailing outward. He hung for time uncounted in that non-space, eyes stretched wide open, lungs aching with the lack of air, his heart sledging against his ribs, then felt the hard ground under his feet, stumbling forward into Dean's back as he blinked in the subdued sunlight.

* * *

_**Acheron, Border of Hell**_

The river was wide, flowing without a ripple past them. Dean walked across the springy green grass and under the cover of the willows, looking around for a familiar landmark. It looked like the stretch he'd arrived in before, the willows still trailing delicate green fronds in the dark water, the cliffs on the others side rising black and grey and the soil bare and ashy and puffing with yellow-grey smoke, escaping from god-knew-where.

"Where are we?" Sam asked, crouching down beside him under the low-hanging branches. "Is this the Acheron? Or the Styx?"

"Stop talking!" Dean hissed at him, leaning out to look down river. The mists that seemed to shroud the water in both directions a few hundred yards away swirled and parted as the prow of the ferryman's slender vessel pushed through it.

"Is that –?" Sam breathed next to his ear and he nodded.

They watched the boat move upstream against the current, three people sitting in the middle of the curved hull, the tall, wild-haired man whose skin was tinted a faint shade of silver sculling the craft expertly to the bank.

From the noxious fog on the other side, Cerberus emerged, stalking slowly to the bank, and Dean felt Sam tense beside him, his brother's exhale warm on the back of his neck. He looked back over his shoulder, eyes narrowed in warning and Sam swallowed, forcing a comment back down his throat.

When the souls had gone through the door in the cliff, the boat pushed off the bank, heading downstream again. Dean let out his own breath as Charon's gaze remained fixed to the river. The dog had vanished in the fumes rising from the ground upstream and he rocked back on his heels, thinking about the best way to take it.

"Dean, that thing is the size of a tank!" Sam whispered to him.

"It can't see me with this," he told him in a low voice, tapping his finger against his chest. "I need to find a place to cross."

He edged out from under the willow branches, looking at the river in both directions. Meg had led them upriver, to find the stones. He'd gone downriver and seen the quay for the damned after only a few hundred yards. He had the feeling that was consistent, up and down the lengths of the river near the gates to their own plane. Upriver was do-it-yourself, downriver was pay the boatman.

"We're going across, together, right?" Sam said, catching up to him as he turned upriver, walking fast.

"No, you stay on this side," Dean said shortly, lengthening his stride as they came to a curving bend. "It'll see you."

"How'm I supposed to back you up –?"

"There they are," Dean cut him off as he caught sight of the stones. From this side of the river, they were large, flat and spaced no more than a yard or so apart. He tried not to think of how they'd look from the other side and getting back over them.

"Just stay here," he said, turning to his brother as he gestured across the river. "If it all goes south, you get across here, but that dog can't see you on this side and once you're in the middle of the river, it'll be able to, so I need a promise that you'll stay put once I've gone over."

Sam looked at the stepping stones mutinously. That wasn't the deal he'd had in mind. They both had the knives; he'd been thinking more of a decoy/butcher arrangement.

"This is a bad idea," he said, turning to glower at him. "I'll be too far away to help if you need it."

"I won't need it, Sam."

The unshakeable confidence, the implacable tone, infuriated Sam more. He knew that if he didn't promise, Dean would just turn around and walk back to the gate, willing to put it off until he could get rid of him. He could feel his brother's impatience, radiating from his motionless frame. Reluctantly, unwillingly, he nodded.

"Alright, I won't come over unless you're in trouble."

Dean felt a thread of relief trickle along his nerves. It was bad enough going to toe to toe with the huge goddamned dog, knowing that the mutt wouldn't be able to see him. Having to watch out for his brother at the same time would've made it impossible. And he wasn't convinced that the heart attack, or whatever it'd been, had left no damage. The doc had said he couldn't find any damage. That wasn't a guarantee.

He drew the knife and turned away, walking down to the edge of the water and jumping lightly to the first stone. It was barely more than a stride to get from one to the next and he landed on the opposite shore, watching the mist shiver and part and close up again warily, moving sideways toward the section of the cliffs where the door had opened.

Glancing around, he was almost at the point on the bank where the boat had drawn up when he heard the rasping breath behind him. Cerberus stood three yards away, midway between bank and cliffs, looking around, the wolf's nose raised slightly as it sampled the air.

Damned thing smelled him, somehow, Dean thought distantly, shifting the grip of the hilt in his hand and crabbing slowly closer. He looked at the three heads, wondering which to take first. The wolf was the decision maker; he'd thought that the last time. The other two were definitely just grunts. Edging toward the cliff face, he looked up at the thick neck and rough pelt that joined the wolf's head to the chest and shoulders and wondered bleakly if the blade he held would get through that mass of fur and muscle to something vital underneath.

Cerberus froze, all three heads dropping at the same time, eyes fixed on the cliff. Realising it was the only chance he was going to get, Dean sprang forward, ducking underneath the wolf's head, scything the short sword up. The dog moved to one side, as if it had sensed him there and the keen black blade drove into the dhole's neck, severing the windpipe and the thick tendons to either side as Dean dragged it across and down, blood like ichor spouting out over him as the wolf howled and the hyena screamed in pain. The blade caught for a second in between the vertebrae and he threw his weight forward, twisting it free and slicing through the remnants of the skin and sinew and muscle running above the spine, the broad, flat head dropping to the ground. He was turning as he dropped after it, but not quickly enough, a bolt of pain from the hole in his side slowing the movement and his right arm was suddenly paralysed as the wolf's long incisors punched into his shoulder. The wolf head threw him up and the hyena's jaws caught him, and in the tangle of snapshot images that he registered, Dean glimpsed the gleam of silver against the yellowing enamel, feeling the bite of the chain digging into his throat a fraction of a second later as the wolf dropped it's head and the hyena raised its snout. He dropped the knife and tried to get his hand in between the chain and his neck. The fucking medallion chain was going to throttle him.

* * *

Sam watched his brother duck under the wolf's jaws and sweep the black knife upward, saw the beast move and the blade bite into the yellowish-red fur of the dhole's neck instead of the wolf's. He was on his feet, by the edge of the water when he watched Dean half-thrown from the wolf to the hyena, saw him drop the blade as his hands flew to his neck, heard the deep growling crunch of the hyena's massive carnassials as they began to cleave the bones of his brother's shoulder.

He was on the first rock before he'd considered what he was doing, long legs making the run across the river easily, the dog oblivious to his approach from behind. Jumping onto its back, Sam drove the slender black blade through the back of the hyena's skull, its mouth flying open as the sword severed both spinal cord and the primitive nerve centre controlling the jaws. Dean dropped to the ground and Cerberus lurched backwards as Sam hacked through the thick neck and the second head fell.

He barely caught a handful of the thick, tufted ruff running up the back of the wolf's neck when it swung around, spraying him in the ichor that fountained from the torn necks, his wrist creaking as it took the weight of his body, giving way and the monster's momentum catapulting him over the shoulder.

The sword blade was up as Cerberus spun around to face him and he stared up into the blood red eyes of the wolf's head, his arms tensing automatically as the dog ran onto the point of the sword. The still-keen edge cut through the muscle and fur protecting the side of the neck and Sam ducked as the head snapped at him, feeling the teeth on one side of the mouth tear down his back, then he was under the jaw and dragging the sword across the throat.

* * *

On the ground, Dean lay on his back, his shoulder shrieking in time with his pulse, blood pouring from the deeply crushed and torn wounds, throat glass-filled and raw where the chain had cut into his windpipe. His eyes flew open as he heard the wolf's high-pitched howl of pain and rage, looking up to see his brother doused in a geyser of stinking ichor as the last head hung from a thin scrap of skin and then fell, the enormous body toppling to one side and hitting the ground with a ground-shaking crash.

Sam turned to look at him, wiping the thick black ooze from his eyes and face, spitting it out of his mouth. His eyes widened as he saw the growing pool of blood soaking into the grey earth around his brother, and he stumbled across to him, dropping to his knees. Pulling Dean's hand from his throat, his face screwed up when he saw the deep indent in the flesh there. The shoulder was worse, he thought, and panic kicked in for a moment as he watched the blood flow unimpeded down Dean's chest.

"You killed it?" Dean rasped at him, and the question, so incredibly irrelevant at this precise moment, so exactly typical of his brother, brought him back to himself.

"You're bleeding out," he said furiously, stripping off his jacket and shirt, turning the jacket inside out to get the lining sleeve free of the black-soaked outer. "Don't move."

Dean leaned back, eyes half-closed as the pain his nervous system was registering in greater and greater detail started to shake through him. _Sam had killed the dog_, he thought dazedly. Sam had completed the first trial. _What the fuck did that mean?_ He felt his brother's hands, packing a wadded up piece of cloth against the tears in his shoulder, wrapping it around the wounds tightly with the ripped-off sleeve. The pressure made it worse.

"Dean, come on," Sam said, sliding an arm beneath his left shoulder and lifting him up. "We gotta get out of here. I need the med kit to stop the bleeding."

"You killed Cerberus, man," Dean said, looking at the wolf's head, the red eyes glazed and staring now, the light gone from them. "Fuck it, you killed it."

"We can talk about this when we're out of the borderlands, alright?" Sam asked, grinding his teeth together as he took his brother's weight, Dean's knees giving way once he was upright.

"No," Dean said suddenly, digging his heels in and dragging Sam to a shuddering stop. "No, you killed it. You got to complete the trial, Sam. You have to make the contract."

"I don't –"

"You have to, or this is been wasted," Dean insisted as his fingers searched through the pocket of his jeans for the paper he'd written the ritual on. Every movement sent a new wildfire of agony through his shoulder but he pulled it out, a crumpled ball, spotted with red and black blood, and handed it to Sam.

"Here? Now?" Sam asked, looking around uncomfortably and back at the paper in his hand.

"Yeah," Dean replied, swaying slightly as he felt a wetness trickling down his side. Damned hole had opened up in the fight, he thought distractedly. That was going to make getting across the stones fun.

"Can you stand?"

Dean nodded. He was okay standing. He didn't think he could move.

Smoothing out the ball, Sam looked at the words written in his brother's neat block lettering. They looked Enochian, but he couldn't be sure.

"Where did you get this?"

"Just read it, Sammy," Dean told him tiredly.

"CNILA SIBSI QADAR IAOD," Sam said slowly. "IALPURG IPAMIS PRDZAR CACRG INOAS TELOAH."

He looked at Dean. "Is that i–"

Every cell, every blood vessel erupted into fire at the same time, and Sam's body convulsed helplessly, head thrown back and mouth stretched wide open in a soundless scream as the excruciating pain incinerated him from head to foot.

Dean stared in horror at his brother's expression, his own pain wiped from consciousness as he reached out for Sam. He snatched his hands back as his brother's skin burned them, a turgid heat radiating out from Sam's body like a blast furnace, convincing him that his brother was cooking from the inside out.

It stopped as suddenly as it had begun and Sam collapsed to the ground, his chest rising and falling in ragged rhythm as he sucked down lungsfuls of the bitter, toxic air, his muscles twitching as the nerves overloaded, his body involuntarily drawing in.

_No_, Dean thought, dropping to one knee beside him, cautiously touching Sam's arm. Not burning, the tendons weren't shrivelling and shortening with the heat, it was his brother's mind convincing his body he was burning. He pushed aside the memory of how his fingers had felt, touching the scalding skin a moment earlier.

"Sam," he said insistently, ignoring the steady trickle of blood he could feel running down his side, down his back, the piercing ache and throb of crushed bone and flesh in his shoulder. "Sam! It wasn't real. You're okay, you're not burning. Sam, you hearing me?"

Sam opened his eyes, looking into Dean's face. "Not?"

"No, just a – a – a hallucination, dude, you're okay," Dean prevaricated, looking for reassurances, not sure there were any around to be found. "See?" He touched Sam's face, laying the back of his hand on one reddened cheek. "Not burning."

"Dean –" Sam said, sitting up slowly, feeling the exhaustion and ache permeating his muscles from the intense contractions they'd gone through. Everything hurt. "It feels – I don't know."

"You were right." Dean shook his head. "We have to get out of here. You're fucked up and I'm fucked up and this is no place to be fucked up." He struggled to his feet, holding out his left hand to his brother. "Can you walk?"

"Yeah, I think so," Sam said, accepting the hand and feeling his legs shake and slowly stabilise as he got to his feet. "Not sure I can jump across the stones in the river."

"Well, let's take it one step at a time and see how we do," Dean said, blinking back the edges of grey from his vision. Under the steel control of handling the practical considerations facing them, Dean felt his rage seething, a growing maelstrom of disbelief and fury that this too had been taken from him. He ignored it, as he ignored the pain and the blood and the residual heat he could still feel in his brother, sliding his left arm around Sam's ribs. They hobbled slowly back along the river bank to the stones, leaning against each other to make walking possible.

A sharp burn on his wrist cut through everything else and he looked at it, seeing the sigil of the Crow blazing with a silver light against his skin.

"Whaddya know," he slurred unsteadily, looking at the stones in the river. "Time to go."

* * *

_**Nahant, Massachusetts**_

The fire crackled cheerfully in the hearth, the whiskey was lambent in the glass on the desk, but Crowley was pacing the glowing Persian rugs, a thin thread of unease goading him back and forth across the long room.

_Something was wrong._

He felt the moment the wolf's head was severed, freezing mid-stride and staring at the fire.

_NO!_

The air rushed in to fill the place he'd been and the flames curling over the logs shivered in the sudden draught.

* * *

In the poisonous yellow-grey light of the borderlands, he stood by the carcass, staring at it, unable to move. The great, slab-muscled body had shrunk a little, the earth around it black with the blood that had drained out, staining the fur at the ragged edges of the chest. All three heads lay separated, eyes open and staring and dulled in death. The glint of silver caught the demon's eye and he knelt beside the wolf's head, opening the mouth and lifting out the chain, the round disc hanging from it avoiding his eye somehow.

_Winchester._

The thought came to him, filled with certainty. Under the hyena head, the oily gleam of black metal protruded and he reached for it, pulling his hand back as the incautious movement to touch the blade sliced through the tip of his finger, and a red-gold light bubbled in the thin line of the parted flesh.

_Blood metal._

The mists on the other side of the river swirled and shifted as a vagrant and scented breeze blew across the water. Crowley saw movement in the mist, too distant to make out, to even discern if it was corporeal or merely the airs shifting around on the healthy side of the border.

He looked back at the wolf's head, one hand reaching out to gently close the red eyes, the other clenched tightly around the pendant.


	17. Chapter 17 Cruciatus Inferni

**Chapter 17 Cruciatus Inferni**

* * *

_**Nahant, Massachusetts**_

Dean staggered sideways as his feet hit the rock, dragging Sam with him. He lifted his head and saw the guide, the dark eyes wide with shock and fear, staring at them.

"What have you done?" Kopaki whispered, the long dark coat lifting up as he turned. Dean's hand flashed out, his groan at the pain of the sudden movement smothered and locked behind his teeth as he caught the Crow's arm.

"Not so fast," he ground out.

Kopaki stared down at the hand on his sleeve. "You killed the guardian!" he hissed at Dean.

"And we're not done," Dean growled at him. "Take us back to the car."

The guide's mouth thinned out, then he turned back to the men, reaching out and gripping both.

The shift was instantaneous this time, an eyeblink of darkness and they stood in the silent clearing next to the black car and the broken building, gravel and weeds under their feet.

"We're done!" Kopaki said, glancing over his shoulder at the trees to the south.

"One more thing," Dean told him, straightening up as he pushed Sam back against the car. "You said that was Crowley's gate?"

The Crow nodded, brows drawing together.

"He got a place around here? On this plane?" Dean asked tersely. A long shot, but worth it if he did.

Kopaki's head jerked back toward the trees. "There, on the cliff edge."

"What?"

The psychopomp vanished, a faint pop as the air rushed in to fill where he'd been and Dean blinked. Here? Right fucking _here_?

"Sonofabitch," he muttered, turning back to his brother and leaning past him to unlock the car door. "Goddamned sonofabitch."

He manoeuvred Sam along the car and around the door, hand over his head as he pushed him inside. Limping around to the trunk, he shook his head slightly again at the Crow's revelation. Didn't change the validity of his arguments, he realised as he opened the trunk and slowly dragged the med kit from the well, they couldn't have gotten in to get the gun without taking the risk of being seen. But … three bullets from that gun and they could've done it – _he_ could've done the job – from a nice, safe distance …

_Sonofabitch_.

Closing the trunk, he turned back and opened the rear door, pushing the heavy box along the seat and climbing in after it. In the front seat, Sam lifted his head, turning to look at him.

"What are you doing?"

"Stopping the leaks," Dean told him shortly, pulling his jacket off and tossing it on the floor, the ripped and stained shirt following it. "How're you doing?"

"Better." Sam twisted slightly on the seat to look back at him.

"What happened?"

"I don't know." He saw the disbelieving expression on Dean's face and ran his hand through his hair. "Honestly, Dean. I didn't feel anything – then it was like I'd had a transfusion of butane instead of blood and someone lit a match."

Dean pulled his t-shirt over his head carefully, peering down at the soaked dressing under his ribs and the makeshift dressing Sam had wound around his shoulder. Both had moved in the action, both were saturated. He dropped the tee shirt onto the pile of clothes at his feet and eased the adhesive tape off his skin, the fragile crusts of scab that had covered the bullet hole coming off with the reddened gauze. In the cold salt air, the raw flesh stung.

"Is it still burning?"

"A little," Sam admitted reluctantly. He'd taken off his ichor-soaked clothing and tossed it into the trunk, wiping as much of the hound's blood off himself as he could and changing. He was still burning. "Mostly, I just feel hot."

"Mmm-hmm."

"I can do that."

Dean looked up and shook his head. "I got it."

"You can't even see the exit hole." Sam exhaled loudly and slid feet first out of the car, walking around the rear door. "Move over."

"I got it, Sam," Dean said again, patience wearing thin.

"You want a shot?" Sam ignored him, leaning past to rummage in the kit. "Take the edge off?"

"No."

At the tone, Sam looked more closely at him. "You're not going in after the gun."

Dammit, Dean thought, keeping his gaze firmly on the sterilised pack he was ripping. He'd hoped Sam'd been too out of it to hear the Crow.

"Dean."

"Hmm?" He looked up expressionlessly. "If you're gunna help with this, how 'bout you get a move on?"

Sam took the pack from his hands and opened the other end, pushing his brother ungently against the back of the seat. "Lean the other way, so the skin's flat."

Dean obliged, eyes closing as another wave of pain numbed his toes and made his stomach roll. He felt Sam's hands, deft and efficient, cleaning the mess on both sides, smelled the meadow scent of the soft, cool unguent he packed into the wound, heard more packs torn open and felt the silky gauze pads taped firmly over the top.

"Lean forward and toward me," Sam instructed, thoughts churning. Knowing where the house was, of course Dean wanted to go in. The injuries wouldn't stop him, would barely slow him down once they were properly dressed and firmly taped. He wouldn't have much use of his right hand, but as he'd said before, a frontal assault would be suicide, he'd be thinking about sneaking in.

The problem was that the cambion were there. And the nephilim. Even if the medallion hid him effectively from their sight, from the Grigori and the demon, they'd probably notice when Chuck disappeared, assuming Dean could find the prophet, the tablet and the gun at all. He unwrapped the make-shift dressing around his brother's shoulder, lower lip caught between his teeth as he tried to think of a way to convince Dean to let him come along.

"I can sneak in," Dean said, watching at his brother's transparent expressions through half-lidded eyes. "You can't."

"Even if you can get in unnoticed, getting Chuck out won't go the same way."

"I'll get the gun first," Dean countered, wincing as Sam tugged at the cloth stuck in the deep cut, his brother's fast glance at him forcing him into smoothing out his expression. "Enough ammo to take them all and Chuck can walk out."

"Dean, make a fist with your right," Sam said, leaning back a little, his attention on his brother's face. Dean scowled, looking down at his hand. The fingers closed up a little, three of them, anyway.

"I can shoot with my left," he said stubbornly, letting his hand relax. The pain of trying to close his hand had brought beads of sweat to his face and he knew Sam had seen it, taking a clean dressing from the kit and wiping the sweat away without comment.

"If you can find the gun," Sam argued. "If Draxler doesn't see you first. If they don't have wards and protection already in place that trigger an alarm." He soaked the thick pad in the saline solution, lifting it carefully free as it loosened.

"Buzzkill," Dean said through closed teeth, focussing his concentration on breathing through the freshnets of agony, on staying fucking _conscious_, as Sam sluiced the open flesh of his shoulder with the solution. "Any of that stuff in there?"

"The topical painkiller?"

Dean groaned softly, trying to nod. Sam pushed the dressings aside and found the small aerosol can.

"It'll hurt worse until the numbing can take affect," he warned him.

"Just spray it in, pack the fucking hole and seal it off," Dean told him, trying not to tense any further. There was a grating sensation in the right collarbone, and he had a feeling it was either cracked or broken. He wasn't going in there with a sling so the whole area needed to be shut off.

Sam looked down at the mass of pulped flesh in front of him. The carnassials of the hyena were cutting teeth, set further back than was normal for a canid, to take advantage of the greater power of the jaw's action. They were designed to crack and crush bone, the animal more scavenger than hunter. And he could see that they'd cracked through the collarbone, shearing the flesh in deep cuts on both sides of Dean's shoulder. It was a miracle he could even lift his hand, he thought as he washed the cuts clean with the saline.

"I'm going to pour some alcohol through this, kill anything that hyena had in its mouth," he told his brother as he unscrewed the lid of the plastic bottle, seeing the muscles tighten again in anticipation.

He was trickling it in when the second blast of burning hit him and he tipped the bottle over, Dean grunting as a gush of raw alcohol flooded his shoulder. He couldn't stop it, dropping to his knees on the door rim of the car, one hand biting deep into the upholstery of the front seat, the other shaking uncontrollably, clear liquid spattering everywhere.

"Christ, Sam!" Dean snarled as he regained control over his nervous system and turned to look at his brother.

Sam knelt beside the seat, head thrown back and the tendons in his neck standing out, his mouth open and his eyes rolled back. Lifting his hand, Dean felt the heat in him before he could touch Sam's skin, seeing every muscle locked and contracted as he shook in anguish.

"What the fuck?" he muttered, catching the almost-empty bottle and righting it. Grabbing his brother's shirt, he pulled Sam onto the seat, half-expecting the upholstery to start smouldering under the heat being generated.

Sam dragged in a breath and pitched forward, leaning out of the car as he managed to throw up a little bile from his stomach, seeing blood in the pool when he opened his eyes.

Resting his hand on his brother's back, Dean felt the heat dissipating again and Sam sat up, wiping an arm over his face.

"Same thing?"

"I think so," Sam replied shakily, spitting again as he tried to rid his mouth of the acid aftertaste.

"No warning?"

"No." It'd lit him up instantly, he thought, replaying the moment unwillingly. One minute, fine, the next on fire and the pain so intense that he was surprised his heart hadn't given out with the shock of it. He could feel his pulse, booming in his ears, but it was steady and it was slowing.

"I think this is clean enough now," Dean said, looking at the reddened mess of his shoulder. He leaned across the lid of the kit and picked up the spray Sam'd dropped.

Looking at him, Sam spat again and turned around. "Give it to me."

"Jesus, no," Dean said, pulling his hand back. "You go up in flames again who the fuck knows what you'll do to me."

"Wow, you're funny," Sam said, glancing at the front of the car, and snatching the can off him when Dean involuntarily followed his gaze. "Was it bad?"

Dean lifted a brow. "I was waiting for your head to explode, dude, like in that movie."

"What movie?"

"The movie where the fucking dude's head explodes!"

"Hold still," Sam said, uncapping and spraying the contents over the open wounds.

Dean's breath hissed in between his teeth, his eyes screwing shut as he forced his jaws to remain closed. The spray hit like a million needles, stabbing into him viciously. He shunted the sensation to one side, his breath coming easier as the analgesic slowly began to numb the nerve endings.

"You can't go in there alone," Sam said, watching Dean's shoulders unclench slowly.

"You can't help with this," Dean said, opening his eyes and looking at his brother. "Whatever that is, it's coming on without warning, and it's fucking incapacitating you, man. You'll be a sitting duck if it happens in the middle of things."

There was no argument against that simple fact, Sam realised with an inward grimace. He could visual the scenario easily enough. He'd be helpless and Dean would be stuck with protecting him, even if it meant losing what he was going in there to find.

Seeing the capitulation in the slump of his brother's shoulders, Dean felt himself start to relax a little as well. The odds were stacked high against him as it was, Sam would've been more than a liability.

"How long do I give you?" Sam asked resignedly.

He looked at his watch. "Till morning. If I'm not out by then, I won't be coming back."

Barely feeling the cool paste Sam was packing the wounds with, Dean thought about how to do actually do it. They'd caught a glimpse of the house from the base of the cliff. In the moonlight against the dark sky, it'd seemed enormous. He was willing to bet there was a basement, possibly more than one level. He'd start with that. Work his way up.

It gave him a place to start, but that was all. Mostly, winging it like this, opportunity arose and was either seen or not. And something was missing; something was nagging at him, buzzing at the back of his mind.

Sam set the gauze dressings over the open slashes and around and over the shoulder, binding them firmly around the shoulder, arm and chest. "Busted your collarbone, I'll try and give it some support."

Nodding, Dean looked down at the pile of filthy clothes on the floor. His duffle was in the trunk, he could get some reasonably clean ones out of it. He closed his eyes and probed mentally at his body, accepting the weak areas and noting what was still strong. He hadn't lied to Sam. He could shoot with his left hand. He was a fucking lousy shot with it, but he could do it. Sneak in and out, he told himself. No heroics. Nothing fancy. Just … unnoticeable.

* * *

The navy jacket was oil-stained but otherwise clean. He blended in against the darkness of the trees better in it. The automatic was in the pocket, Sam's long black-bladed knife held by his belt, Ruby's knife sheathed at the back of his hip. He looked around the silent clearing, Sam standing beside him, trying to shake the feeling that he'd forgotten something.

"Morning." He turned away, moving toward the trees at the southern end, the sea breeze freshening on his face.

Sam nodded, then called out softly as his brother disappeared at the treeline. "Dean … don't do anything stupid."

* * *

_**US 191, Utah**_

"There's a road going through," Peter said softly.

Elias nodded. "They're on the eastern flank, between the peak and the next ridge. We can follow the road to within a couple of miles – I don't want to get any closer."

Penemue looked at him. "That is a wise decision. Even with the sigils, if they have laid trap wards and triggers around the area, we wouldn't see them before setting them off."

"What angles are our best bets?" Vince asked, scratching unconsciously at the paste-filled cuts that marked his chest beneath his clothing.

"You and Peter check it out from that south-west peak, below the ridge line if you can. The scopes'll give you a pretty close look. Me and Penemue'll take the north-east ridge line, before the woods head down the slope. We'll be dark," he added, looking from Peter to Vince. "Lee and Joseph will stay with the cars here."

"Dark?" Penemue raised an eyebrow at Peter.

"No voice, no signals. On our own," Peter clarified briefly, glancing at Vince. "Ready?"

The younger hunter nodded, a cocky grin lifting one cheek. "Always."

Elias refrained from commenting about the expected lifespan of cocky young men and gestured to the Qaddiysh. "We'll go north, and then cut over."

* * *

Lying in the thick wet mass of dead leaves and pine needles, Elias moved the scope incrementally across the distant compound, automatically filing numbers, layout, vehicles and the guards he could see. He knew the tall, dark-haired fallen angel was a few feet to his left but he could neither see nor hear him, and he liked that just fine.

Dean was going to be rabid to get here, he thought, staring at the buildings. They'd counted five Grigori at least, a dozen nephilim and several others he wasn't sure of, hoping that Penemue would be able to identify them when they returned to the cars. There were twenty or more humans moving around as well, some of them guards, but others were prisoners, leg chains limiting their movement and all wearing some kind of collar around their necks. They looked fed, the ones he'd seen. He couldn't make out much more detail than that.

It might've been a resort or a private ranch, he couldn't tell. There were a lot of buildings, of varying sizes, some of which had obvious functions, others more obscure. If the humans he'd seen were identified as cambion, they would need more than the node stones to take them out, they'd need weapons. At least three were still teenagers, and he wasn't sure if that made a big difference or not.

Easing his gaze down to his watch, he realised that it was time to go. He looked slowly around the compound again, double-checking that he had all the information that could be gleaned from such a distance and started to ease himself back down the eastern slope of the ridge.

* * *

"Cambion, definitely," Penemue told him as they walked together down the narrow dirt road another two miles further from the ridge. "I counted six, as you did. Three still under their majority, and the other three mature adults."

"What'd you think of the slave setup?" Elias asked, most of his attention on the woods around them, the road behind them and the normal, expected sounds from both.

Penemue glanced at him quizzically. "It looked like they were slaves," he said, somewhat mystified. "Captured to serve the Grigori."

Elias blinked, lifting a thick auburn brow as he turned his head to look at him. "They want servants?"

"They always had slaves," Penemue told him dryly. "Household, farm, workers, sexual – that was one of the many reasons people disappeared in the areas they settled."

"Actually, that's something I noticed," the hunter said, shunting the disgust aside as he remembered another detail. "None of the nephilim or the cambion women were pregnant, or at least, they didn't seem to be showing, and the women at home all are now – didn't Ninshursag have the same effect on them as on the regular humans?"

Several of the chained human women had been pregnant, the ones who hadn't looked as if they might've been too old.

The Qaddiysh shrugged. "I don't know. They might have been protected or might have protected themselves."

Too many fucking things that they didn't know about these creatures, Elias thought sourly, and not enough that they did. Felix and Frances were working full-time on getting all of this information together, they might finish in time to help the next generation.

"How long have you known the Winchesters?" Penemue asked him, his face cool and expressionless.

Elias turned to look at him, wondering at the change in subject. "Not long. I met their father, a long time ago, heard rumours about them, a lot of rumours in the last few years."

"You were there, weren't you? In Iowa?"

"Yeah," Elias allowed warily. "I was there."

"Do you trust Dean to lead these people?" The Qaddiysh asked, his tone clipped. "Will you still follow him?"

The auburn-haired hunter stopped on the dusty road. "That's probably not a question you should be throwing around right now," he said slowly.

Penemue stopped and turned to him. "Nevertheless, I am asking it."

"Yeah, I trust him," Elias said, steel-blue eyes narrowing slightly. "I'll follow him."

"Why?"

"Because he won't give up," Elias said after a moment's thought about it. "He won't give in – no matter what else happens."

"His resolve, it is still strong?"

"I guess you could put it that way."

"Thank you," Penemue said, turning away and resuming his pace down the road.

"Hold on." Elias strode after him, catching the fallen angel's arm and dragging him to a stop. "Why'd you ask me that?"

"My brothers and I, we have risked our lives to come to this country, to do what we can in the face of the events that are unwinding," Penemue said, looking down at the hunter. "We watched Winchester kill Lucifer, in the city to the south." He shook his head slightly. "His own people are questioning him now, questioning his loyalties, his ability to lead. We must know where we stand, Elias."

"Who's questioning Dean?" the hunter asked, frowning.

"The people in the keeps," Penemue said, gesturing vaguely eastwards.

"They're civilians, they don't know what the hell is going on."

"But they are losing that trust in him," the angel told him. "And it may be that he will need their support, one day soon."

"What the fuck do you know, Penemue?" Elias growled softly.

"Nothing," the Qaddiysh said quickly. "Nothing concrete. You know he is supposed to be standing over the lines. Changing them?"

"Yeah, Jerome's talked about it."

"The second trial involves the retrieval of Lucifer's sword, from the Cage on the ninth level of Hell," Penemue explained. "None but Lucifer and his chosen vessel may touch that sword – any other faces instant death."

Elias licked his lips as he took that in. "So Sam's supposed to do these trials?"

"We believe so."

"And Dean?"

"We don't know about that," Penemue admitted. "Without more knowledge, we don't know if that was meant to be from the beginning or not."

"Son of a bitch," the hunter said softly. Dean had been told by Death that he would close the gates of Hell. What'd changed in the last six months to make that impossible? The trials had been written more than two thousand years ago, according to the scholars. Why would Death see something other than what had been spelled out for that long?

* * *

_**Nahant, Massachusetts**_

Dean crouched in the herbaceous border that separated the huge house from its nearest neighbour, looking at the lights in the rooms he could see from the front and side, his fingers brushing against his collar, feeling automatically for the chain.

He looked down when he couldn't find it, the memory flooding his mind at the same time. Gleaming around the yellowing-ivory tooth. Choking him. The lift of the wolf's head and he'd dropped to the ground, slipping through it.

_It was still on the banks of the Acheron._

He swore silently for two minutes, eyes shut and teeth clenched. Then he opened his eyes and looked back at the house. With it or not, he was going in. He was too fucking close to back out now.

With the views of the sea on two sides of the house, and the front an unlikely prospect, he moved back out of the border and worked his way through the overgrown woodland on either side of the straight driveway, moving as slowly as he could to the western side of the building. The trees had encroached much closer to the house, over what had once been lawn, and he stopped as he neared the north-west corner, pressed back against a tree-trunk as golden light, spilling across the dead grass from a curtainless window, gave him a view into the house.

Baeder and Dietrich stood there, in a parlour or drawing room or whatever the hell it was, both Grigori holding glasses, their expressions reflecting their conversation.

Baeder looked pissed, Dean thought, with a thin thread of satisfaction at the sight; Dietrich appeared amused as he lifted his glass in a mocking salute to the other man.

Dragging his gaze from them, Dean studied the room, then the side of the house. If the rooms to either side of the central hall were mirrored, there would be a back hall to the kitchen and wherever they'd stashed the servants back in the day, and at least two staircases leading to the upper floors, a grand one at the front of the house and a smaller, narrow one somewhere at the back. On the other side, maybe mirroring the dining room, he had a good possibility of finding Crowley's study or some variation of it. And he was sure, Crowley would be keeping the firearm in there, as it had been kept in the echo of this house on the lower plane.

The back of his neck prickled sharply and he stopped moving, turning very slowly, his gaze tracking his immediate surroundings from the ground up. He saw it a moment later, jammed in the fork of the tree behind and to one side of him. Apple-sized, the wizened and crinkled ball of leather didn't look particularly threatening but he hesitated as he took a step closer, the creases seeming to shift minutely, shadows deepening fractionally. Better to leave it alone, he thought, stepping back from it. And give it a wide berth.

Backing through the undergrowth, he skirted the tree and its peculiar decoration widely, watching more carefully as he moved through the thickly growing trees and saplings. The prickle vanished as he'd backed up from the tree, and he worked his way around the corner of the house without feeling it again, looking at the slanted basement door with a wash of relief.

There was no lock on the peeling, planked doors, just a bolt on the outside. He drew it back gently and opened one side, staring into a black void below the top three steps. He waited a minute, senses desperately stretched out for a wrong noise, wrong smell, wrong feeling, then sensing none of those things, he climbed down into the darkness, easing the door shut behind him.

At the bottom of the steps, he hesitated again, wondering at the wisdom of turning on a flashlight in a place so full of enemies. The alternative, blundering through the dark into who-knew-what was not appealing. If, for some reason, there _was_ a delicately piled heap of stuff that would make a racket if he ran into it, it would be a lot better if he could see to avoid it, he decided. He pulled out the flashlight and thumbed it on, moving the beam slowly around the room. It was bare and dusty and empty, a timber and metal chute beside the steps he'd come down suggesting that it was the coal cellar. The space wasn't anywhere near the size of the house and in the corner, the flashlight beam showed a door, heavy and closed with a simple latch.

He flicked off the flashlight and lifted the latch carefully, cracking the door. A sliver of light fell into the room.

Peering out cautiously, he saw a wide hall with a staircase at both ends and closed doors punctuating the length. _Multiple choice_, he thought bitterly, hesitating on the threshold. _Gun first_.

With it, he could go through the house like a dose of salts, cleaning as he went. Without it, even if he found Chuck and the tablet, he would only have the black knife and Ruby's knife and he didn't think either would be enough to give him an advantage over Draxler or the nephilim. The knowledge that he'd come in here, loaded with rage but not much else, gnawed at him. It had not been a smart move.

He slipped into hall, drawing the door closed behind him, and headed for the stairs to the right. He could smell the salt on the faintly damp air, a remote curiosity about how thin the cliff walls were between the basement and the sea flickering through his mind then pushed aside.

At the top of the stairs, another door led into the brightly-lit kitchen, and he crossed the exposed room quickly, finding the narrow hall on the eastern side of the house. Every door along it was shut. He tried the first, finding a small bathroom. The second, on the other side of the hall, was a store-room. His hand closed around the door-knob of the third door, when he felt a breath on the back of his neck.

_No warning. Again._

"You shouldn't have come here," the not-quite-familiar baritone told him mildly. "Not your time yet."

Before he could move or even figure out what that meant, an arm had hooked around his neck, muscle and tendon contracting, cutting off the blood supply on either side. The sleeper hold was fast and effective and darkness swallowed him without protest.

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Kansas**_

Father McConnaughey pushed aside the pile of paper in front of him and leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes tiredly with his fingertips. On the other side of the table, Baraquiel sucked in a sharp breath, long red hair spilling forward over one shoulder as he leaned closer to the typed transcription, his eyes narrowing.

"_The penitent will enter the Cage and take the sword of the Most Unclean from him. The sword is brought back and the trial is completed with the renewal of the contract with God_."

Father Emilio looked curiously across the table at him. "What is it?"

"The second trial requires the sword of Lucifer," the Qaddiysh said, staring at the page.

"Yes," Father Emilio agreed mildly, leaning toward him. "And?"

"And no one can touch an angel's sword." Baraquiel lifted his gaze to the priest. "Each sword resonates with the angel's frequency – their exact frequency – to touch one would create a dissonance in the energy and destroy the person attempting to take it."

"It's impossible?" Father McConnaughey looked at him, silver brows drawing tightly together. "It can't be."

"Not impossible," the angel said, shaking his head as he turned to him. "One man can retrieve Lucifer's sword. His vessel."

"Sam," Father Emilio said. The Jesuit closed his eyes.

"Yes."

"And if Dean has already killed Cerberus?"

Baraquiel stared at him helplessly. "I do not know."

"Only one can complete the trials, and once the contract has begun, to forfeit the quest is to forfeit life," Father McConnaughey said slowly. "Is there a way to shield the sword? To handle it without touching it?"

"An angel may," Baraquiel nodded. "Silk is a powerful shield. Or lead. That is what we would use to collect the weapons of the dead after battle, and bury them together. I have never heard of a human doing so, but that means nothing."

"We'll know when they return," Father Emilio said decisively. "Until then, we must hope that they have either failed, or that somehow, Sam killed the hound."

"Thin bloody hope," Father McConnaughey said caustically. "I told you this wasn't set."

The Jesuit looked at him with a tired smile. "So you did. Would you like a medal?"

"The way in is cleared by the dog's death," Baraquiel interjected quietly, seeing the older priest's face darken. "Did they know this? The blood of Cerberus is the key to the doors of Hell. They will need it to enter to perform the second ordeal."

"I'm not sure," Father Emilio said, frowning at the pages in front of the Qaddiysh. "We weren't looking for the answers to the second trial before they left."

"What a great bloody mess," said Father McConnaughey, pushing his chair back irritably and getting to his feet. "We've been one step behind the whole time."

"Well, we will just have to pick our pace." The Jesuit looked up at the old man. "Sam included the details of moving through the accursed plane with what we have on the second trial before he left. Alex underlined this in those notes – no weapon save the divine will wound or kill them. There is an order to these instructions but it was designed to be clear only to the prophet, studying the entire tablet over time. The blood of Cerberus is necessary to open the doors to Hell once the borderlands have been entered. The first trial was to kill the dog. And presumably, take it's blood. The second trial is to retrieve the sword of an angel from the deepest level. The instructions on getting there are spelled out. Only a divine weapon can kill an arch demon. The only divine weapon available will be Lucifer's sword –"

"You think the third trial will be to kill one of the Fallen?" Baraquiel looked at him uncertainly.

"I am reasonably sure that it will be," Father Emilio said. "Each trial increases in difficulty, but each provides the essential key to the next. It is logical."

"We don't know what happened to the Fallen," Father McConnaughey pointed out, his tone acidic. "We don't know how many there are."

"There are – were – four left, after Winchester was raised," Baraquiel said, looking at him. "Crowley could not have taken them by force."

"And the angel said that the gates had to be closed before they were released," Father Emilio added. "The demon found a way to bind them."

"If they are bound, then killing one or all of them should be an easier task?" Baraquiel suggested. "Getting past them to the Cage should also become less of a risk to the penitent."

Father McConnaughey shook his head impatiently. "This is pure speculation. And we have no further information on the arch demons – it may be on the tablet, but it is not here."

"It is," Baraquiel said, getting up and moving around the table to the stacks of typed transcripts. "It is just not obvious."

"The histories?"

"Yes."

* * *

_**Lightning Oak Keep, Kansas**_

Ellen sat down as she felt the kick, running her hand automatically over the curve of her belly. So far, so good, she told herself. She was forty-five and it'd been a long time since she'd done this, but everything had come back, as if the intervening years hadn't existed, the tiredness and the surges of emotions, the powerful desire to make everything ready, to have her home back.

The tower had been rebuilt, wider and stronger, Liev had assured her, with additional accommodation added to the keep's interior for the population explosion to come. They'd lost most of their possessions in the attack, and finding more had proved more difficult than she'd imagined. There were undoubtedly cities throughout the country that held what they needed, wrapped and stored and waiting for them to find, but it required people to go out and find them, and everyone had too much to do as it was. Ryan had been teaching basic carpentry for the last four weeks, and their table and chairs were simple, straight-legged and straight-backed, shining pale gold under the fresh coats of varnish, a plain sofa and armchairs built by the apprentices and upholstered in the thick newly-woven wool mixes of Sarah's group, weavers in training. For a moment, looking at them, Ellen wondered if this was a glimpse into their future – no more exotic fabrics, at least not until the weavers had mastered the techniques. Everything utilitarian until time wasn't such a precious commodity.

"You alright?" Bobby walked into the room, pushing his cap back as he saw her.

"Fine," Ellen told him, shunting the introspective worries aside. "What did Boze have to say?"

Sitting in the armchair across from her, Bobby scratched the short beard consideringly. "They tracked the pack into the forest – the older forest – and killed most of them last night," he told her. "Some got away. Said that the werewolves were different though."

"Different how?" Ellen asked, a trickle of unease rising up her spine at his expression.

"It was night," Bobby hedged. "Boze said that they could've made a mistake."

"Bobby," Ellen said warningly. "Mistake about what?"

The hunter sighed. "He said that a lot of them looked like wolves."

"Actual wolves?"

"That's what he said."

"What does that mean?" she asked him. "Werewolves barely transform in real life. Teeth, eyes, they get stronger … that's about it."

"Yeah, I know," he said, lifting his hands helplessly. "I'm just the messenger."

"Did they get any footage?" Close circuit video had been SOP for the camps and the keeps here since the croat attack two years ago.

He shook his head. "No, they were too far out."

"Whose word are we taking on this?"

"Boze saw one. Maurice reported the same thing, when they got back to the camp," Bobby said. "If they re-gather, try and attack the camps again, we might get some pictures."

"Did you ask Michel where Nintu is now?" she asked. He looked at her, feeling the smooth hum of their thoughts in synchronisation. That'd been the first thing he'd done when he'd heard the Tawas report.

"Yeah, she's north, eastern Canada, in the high lats," he told her.

"So she could've released Raat?"

"I think she did that before she went south to Texas." He looked down at his hands, resting on his knees. "That pack was circling Tawas before we got word of the skinwalker's location."

"What's the lore on the early generations of the werewolves?"

"Not much," Bobby said unhappily. "Santos specialised in them, but I haven't heard from him for years."

"Santos? He died in '09, Bobby," Ellen said. "Mariana took over the research but she wasn't hunting."

He looked at her with a surprised chuckle. "How'd you keep in touch?"

"I keep tabs on everyone," she told him dryly. "Even if Mariana didn't make it, she wouldn't've left that library unprotected."

"Alright, who can we spare to take a look?"

"Did you meet Tilly when they came in with Maurice?"

He scratched his brow, looking down. "The woman who learned about hunting from Chuck's books?"

"That's her," Ellen said, stretching her legs out. "She trained up five or six people while they were stuck in Minnesota, not bad either."

"Christ, Ellen, they're total rookies!"

"No, they looked after themselves before Maurice found them and they've been on a refresher course with Kelly and Franklin, who has a few new trainees himself, by the way," she added, tilting her head as she looked at him. "Vince can take point, he's had a couple of days off now."

"Alright, alright," he gave in abruptly. "I'll give Franklin a call, tell him to get the trucks ready."

"Bobby, Vince asked me what I thought Dean would want to do about the Grigori settlement they found."

"What can he do?" he asked. "He and Sam won't be back for at least another few days. They weren't moving, he said. Just … waiting, by the sounds of it."

"The passes are all clear, they could come for us at any time," she argued.

"But they haven't," Bobby countered reasonably. "An' they probably won't on their own, they'll wait for Crowley to rustle up another army before they try to take us."

"I thought Dean would want to take them out before it got anywhere near that," she said.

"Yeah, probably he would." He looked at her. "Probably, he will, when he gets back. In the meantime, I'm not losing sleep over it."

Watching the expressions cross her face, he moved from the chair to the sofa, putting his arm around her. "What?"

"After what happened with Lisa, I didn't think he'd ever get past that," she said softly, leaning her head back against his shoulder. "But he did, somehow, and a few days before the attack, when I was over at the keep, I got such a strong feeling that he'd figured something out, found what he'd been searching for."

Bobby sighed, his arm tightening around her a little. "Yeah, I know."

"He can't keep taking this punishment, Bobby," Ellen said, thinking of what Dean had told Bobby before he and Sam had left. "It's going to take everything good out of him."

Bobby thought about the man he'd helped John Winchester to raise. He'd met the boy at eight, and he'd known then that Dean had carried the responsibilities of an adult, had borne the load of an adult, guardian to his brother, backup to his father. That load had crippled something inside of him, but he'd never acknowledged it, had never admitted to his fear that he couldn't keep going, doing whatever he had to, sacrificing whatever was needed from him.

It'd come as a surprise to him when Dean had told him to include Alex in whatever information they had. Lisa had been kept firmly at arm's length when it came to what they were fighting, what they were doing. He'd wondered back then, but hadn't asked, if that had been his decision, or Lisa's. The situation was different, he admitted to himself. Alex's responsibilities for the keep population – she did need to know what they were facing, who would be there and who wouldn't. But it hadn't been that. It hadn't been that at all.

The last conversation, outside the order, he'd finally seen what Dean had kept inside, what her death had done and was continuing to do. He thought Ellen might be right about the hunter, although he wouldn't've been able to believe it before. Everyone had an end point, a point beyond which they just couldn't go. He'd never thought he see Dean's.

* * *

_**Nahant, Massachusetts**_

Cold, damp air goose-fleshing his bared skin. The smell of a reluctantly burning fire, newly lit, the wood wet and charring. His shoulder was a mass of agony, the broken bone and open flesh twisted up, his wrists burning with the rope that held them together, his weight hanging from them. The hole in his side was throbbing insistently, the dressing gone, the skin stretched out between ribcage and pelvis. He couldn't feel ground beneath his feet. For a terrifying moment, his memories filled him, this situation familiar, missing only the nauseating smell of brimstone and the heat of the fires, the chittering of demon's wings high above him, the laughter of the silver-eyed demon. He swallowed, forcing the memories away. Not the same. _Not_.

Didn't mean he wasn't in big trouble, he thought, opening his eyes slightly, the flickering light from the fire casting moving shadows over rough stone walls, the overhead lights dim and murky and not dispelling the shadows at all. Baeder stood beside the smoking fire, poking at it with a long iron bar. Dietrich leaned against a cupboard, under a frame on the wall that had been hung with a black cloth. The detail snagged his attention for a moment but he couldn't work out why.

Behind him, he heard a soft rumbling, and a faint scree of metal on stone. The image explaining the noises popped into his mind effortlessly. Grinding stone. Someone was sharpening something.

"He's conscious," the baritone voice of the cambion said from behind him.

"Mr Winchester, you are proving to be a most persistent and irritating obstacle to our plans," Dietrich said, straightening up and walking toward him.

Dean looked at him expressionlessly.

"Ah … today we get the silent treatment," Dietrich said understandingly. "I'm afraid that won't be acceptable."

He looked past Dean, nodding slightly and Dean heard the scrape of a chair being pushed back across the stone floor, heavy footsteps moving around, a soft hiss and slur that he couldn't identify. The footsteps stopped and he thought Draxler was standing behind him, forcing himself to keep his eyes on Dietrich and ignore the cambion. Whatever was going to happen, he wouldn't be able to talk himself out of it, and for the time being, he didn't have any other options.

_Physical pain is a key_. Alastair's voice spoke languidly through his memories. _It must be wielded carefully, when the victim is flesh and blood, but down here, it can utilised to the full extent. Almost all souls retain a memory of body, of nerve and muscle, sinew and tendon and blood and bone. Those memories are what we carve, Dean_.

"How did you find this place?" Baeder stepped up beside Dietrich, his single eye glittering in the thick, uneven light, his breathing quickening as his gaze moved over Dean.

Dean stared at him, lips thinning out in the effort to hold down the fury he felt, his fingers curling slightly with the desire to tighten around Baeder's neck.

Baeder saw the hunter's eyes darken and felt a frisson of fear spark through his nerves. It'd been a long time since anyone or anything had awoken that sensation in him, and in any other time or place, he might have been intrigued by it, a reaction so unfamiliar. But they didn't have the time. And the knowledge he had of this man, this … monkey wrench, as the demon called him, insisted that they strip whatever information they could from him, and kill him.

Watching an unidentifiable emotion twitch the side of Baeder's face, the side that still had movement, Dean wondered remotely if it had been fear. He saw the Grigori nod and a sharp, whistling noise filled the air behind him. The hardened points and knots of the multiple lashed whip struck his skin, tearing at it and leaving several small, shallow cuts in his upper back, the assault shocking and agonising. He clenched his teeth together as the involuntary tension through his body dragged fresh pain from shoulder and side, feeling his blood welling in the cuts and trickling down.

_You're just not getting deep enough. Well, you lack the resources. Reality is just, I don't know, too concrete up here_. Another memory, more recent.

He'd been right, Dean thought. Couldn't pull the wings off up here, nope, nervous system overload and body shock and bam, no more questions. Up here, all they could do was hurt. And he had a wealth of experience with pain.

"How did you find us?"

The moaning whistle of the leather strips through the air. Fire and acid. Lower this time. Blood, running in rivulets over his skin.

He sucked in a deep breath, lifted his head, stared at the Grigori.

"Use the salt," Dietrich said and Dean heard the rustle of a bag.

It burned into the cuts, and then poured into the much deeper tears over his shoulder, the cambion's big hand pressing it in and closing hard around the torn up flesh. Dean felt the bone-deep, wracking shudder from head to foot as he drowned in agony, some distant part of himself watching for the overload.

"Eric, this isn't–"

"How did you find this place?" Baeder cut Dietrich off, his voice rising.

The hardened leather sliced through his flesh again, lower down, the cambion's freakish strength bruising skin and muscle, hammering deep.

In Hell, he'd retreated, behind walls, keeping himself apart when the pain had corkscrewed into unbearable, into excruciating, keeping himself sane with the memories of life and his family, with real things he'd hoarded like precious gems. He'd told the demon he'd dreamed of revenge but he'd lied to Alastair. His dreams had been strings of tiny pearls, tiny, discrete moments remembered from life, strung together and each one anchoring him, reminding him who he was.

"Turn him around." He heard Baeder say distantly, his ears filled with the accelerating rush of his blood.

"Eric! Did you read Crowley's file–" Dietrich's voice had risen.

"How did you find us?!"

The cambion kept the whip at chest height, and the broken rib flexed sickening under the blow, a hundred razors slicing through him and one knot catching the edge of the hyena's bite, sizzling in the raw flesh.

"Give it to me!"

"Eric! He was forty years in the–"

"_HOW DID YOU FIND US!?_"

Dean screamed as the lash ends hit and cut into his abdomen, burning across his skin, the Grigori maddened past control and the knout rising and falling repeatedly, leaving bleeding slashes in furrows from collarbone to thighs.

_Carved you into a new animal_, Alastair whispered in his mind. _No. No, you didn't carve anything_, Dean replied, unsure if he'd said it aloud or just in his head. _You just gave me 101 in pain management, Alastair._

The epiphany was there and gone as his body began to overload, his throat raw and tasting of copper, excruciating pain everywhere and no place to turn. Baeder's voice became shrill and the sharp, hardened ends and knots raked across his face, leaving cuts over forehead, cheeks and jaw as he tried to jerk back from it, eyes screwed shut.

He felt hot breath against his cheek, a cold, clammy hand clamped around his jaw.

"She screamed, you know," Baeder croaked to him, flecks of spittle hitting his mouth. "Screamed and begged me not to kill her children, your children–"

Inside of him, there was a sudden, deep silence, blocking out the voice that breathed its obscenities at him, the crackle of the fire and the other Grigori's shouting. It shut out the fury that shrieked in his mind, the pounding blood-lust that filled his veins. Inside of him there was a silence and a stillness and he was forced to listen.

_I do, you know_. He heard her voice, clearly. _I do love you_.

The rush of emotion came much faster than the last time and this time he knew what was happening, knew what would happen. His eyes opened as pure power flushed the pain from his body, wiping him clean of everything but an expanding strength, pulsing in time with his heart.

Turning his head a little, Dean caught a fragmented glimpse of Baeder's eye, widening at whatever it saw in his face. Then he slammed his head forward, feeling the precise hit on the angel's skull, seeing a split through the skin and under that a crack appear, seeing it widen as the Grigori dropped like a stone to the floor. He was already moving, legs drawn up tightly, twisting himself around, the chain between his ankles looping over the cambion's head, and a flat roll between the ropes holding him crossed the chain, tightening it instantly around the thick neck, Draxler's hands dropping bag and knife to clutch at it.

With the momentum of his weight and the swing, he dragged the half-breed around, twisting the ropes further, building the kinetic energy in them. He grunted with the effort, using the power flooding his body to lift himself almost horizontal, the cambion swung off his feet and sent crashing into the wall above the cupboard, smashing the covered frame above it.

The ropes had reached their breaking point and they sheared above his head, dropping him to the floor. Dean landed on his hands and the balls of his feet, looking down at the broken chain between his ankles, the links had stretched and snapped with the weight of the half-breed and his impact into the wall. Lightning and thunder were filling him up, and he knew he was going to pay for this strength later, if there was a later, but right at this minute, he felt invincible as he hit Dietrich with his left shoulder, knocking the fallen across the room and into the opposite wall.

The deep growl from behind him gave him a half-second's warning and he was turning, catching the closed fist as it sailed past him, dropping to the stone floor and planting one bare foot into Draxler's ribs. The long muscles of his thighs stretched out and lifted, the man's own weight and speed sending him flying across the room as Dean thrust him off.

Rolling over, Dean felt something slice into his palm and looked down, a long sliver of mirror reflecting a part of his face unrecognisably. He picked it up and swung around, holding the shard out as the cambion rushed for him, bracing himself for the impact.

He watched Draxler glance down at the glass in his hand, saw his eyes widen, almost comically, in terror and then he was gone, the piece of glass much heavier and almost slicing his fingers off as his arm sagged. Dropping it, Dean caught a flashing glimpse of a dark-haired, dark-eyed man as it hit the floor, then the broken glass reflected the ceiling only.

Baeder was still out, he noted, scanning the room fast, Dietrich shaking his head and rolling onto his stomach on the other side of the room. He had no time to hang about and wonder about the fucking half-breed. His clothes and the long black knife had been dumped in a pile near the door and he grabbed jeans and the knife, feeling the strength that had filled him dissipating slowly.

Running for the door, he was glad to see that it had a bolt on the outside, and he reached out and made a grab for the handle. He dragged it shut behind him, slamming the bolt home and turned around, to look up and down the hall. He was in the basement, on the eastern side, he thought, recognising the cellar door he'd come through however long ago that'd been. He sprinted toward the stairs.

* * *

_**River Acheron, Border of Hell**_

Crowley crouched by the wolf's head, absently stroking the long fur as he tried to figure out what had happened. It had to have been the Winchesters, either one or the other or both down here. What possible purpose could killing Cerberus have served? Chuck had produced volumes of paper which were virtually unreadable, but none of it had mentioned the killing of the guardian – he froze as he thought of the prophet and the tablet.

_Unprotected_ prophet and tablet.

Unprotected on the _earthly _plane prophet and tablet.

Thrusting the pendant in his jacket pocket, he lurched to his feet and disappeared.

* * *

_**Nahant, Massachusetts**_

Leaning against the kitchen cabinet, Dean pulled on the jeans, trying to ignore the bright spears of pain as the denim dragged over the cuts and abrasions. The power he'd drawn from himself had almost gone, and the only thing he had left between him and an overload of pain was the adrenalin that was pumping through his system. It wouldn't last much longer either. He picked up the knife and ran for the hall.

The woman who came around the corner was tall, almost as his own height, slender and shapely in close-fitting, tapered dark pants and a thin fluffy-looking white sweater, long black hair gathered loosely at the nape of her neck. Large, periwinkle-blue eyes widened as she saw him skid to a stop in the hall in front of her.

He leapt forward, the blade plunging into her stomach, stopped as the hilt hit her ribs and for a long second, they stood as close as lovers, Dean's gaze shifting from the surprise in her eyes to the trickle of blood that slipped from the corner of her mouth. His hand gripped her shoulder and shoved her backwards, off the knife's long blade, the metal whickering through the air as he strode forward in time with her backwards stagger, ignoring the dull thud of her head hitting the wall.

_Has to be the heart_, he reminded himself, dropping beside her and ramming the blade through the ribs of the fallen body, twisting it and sliding his fingers into the opening. He yanked back on the ribs as the knife sliced through the cartilage holding them together, and drove the edge through the lung, feeling for the large muscle that beat obscenely in his hand as he dragged it free of the chest cavity.

His head snapped up as he heard the pounding of booted feet down the hall, rising fast to his feet and dropping the heart to one side of the body. He yanked out the knife, wiping it and his blood-covered hand haphazardly on his jeans. The room he'd thought might be Crowley's study was the third door, he remembered, and he half ran to it, pulling it open and slipping inside as the pounding grew louder.

The lightswitch was where he expected, his hand slapping at the wall to the side of the doorway. The room lit up with a dozen wall sconces and a delicate small chandelier overhead and he looked around a little dazedly. It was, down to the last detail, exactly the same as the room in Hell. Striding fast to the desk, he drove the knife's edge in the thin line between the door and frame of the cupboard, hoping like hell that Crowley had been stupid enough to put the gun back in the same place he'd found it.

The pearwood box was there and it had weight. Dean dropped the knife on the blotter and lifted it out, dragging in a deep breath as the effort pulled at his wounds. He picked up the knife and rammed the blade into the thin gap between the lid and the box next to the lock. A hard twist and the lock broke, the lid flying open. His fingers moved surely over the barrel, breaking the breech and loading the bullets, taking the rest and shoving them into his pockets as he reassembled the barrel, breech and cylinder and felt them click into the grip.

* * *

"Ariana!" Joaquin screamed, running down the hall and falling to his knees beside the dead nephilim. Behind him, Baeder lurched along the hallway, his face a brilliant red with fury, Dietrich half-running behind him. Neither knew what had happened to the cambion, nor to the boy who'd disappeared as well.

"The office!" he snapped at Joaquin, gesturing to the blood-smeared door knob.

"What the fuck is going on here?!" Crowley snarled, materialising on the other side of the nephilim's body, his gaze flicking from the headless corpse to the enraged Grigori. "What happened?!"

"Winchester is here," Baeder said, gesturing at the study door as Joaquin turned the knob and threw himself in.

"No – the gun–" Crowley shouted.

* * *

The door burst open, a tall, young man leaping into the room, a deep shout from outside and Dean fired, the first of Colt's bullets ploughing smoothly into Joaquin's chest, blue fire lighting up the punctured heart as the nephilim fell to the floor. He was moving, accelerating, and he jumped over the body, rocketing into the hallway as he belatedly recognised the voice that had shouted.

Baeder shrieked at him, lunging forward and Dean lifted the gun unhurriedly, the barrel steady as he pulled the trigger. The bullet hit Baeder in the face, blue lightning crawling over his skull as he seemed to rise straight into the air, neck stretching up, then fell, crumpling as his feet hit the ground. Dean looked down at him, firing again, the second bullet punching through the ribs and into the heart, a flare of cerulean fire lighting the chest cavity.

Crowley swung around, dragging the pendant from his pocket and trying to pull the silver chain over his head, and Dean snapped the barrel up, hitting the demon in the back of the thigh with the first shot. The demon staggered forward, his attempt to disappear failing as the magic of Colt's bullet cut him off from Hell, crackling through his limb and lighting it with a mixture of red and gold and blue and black. The barrel of the revolver lifted and Dietrich fell at the corner of the hall, the small round hole in the centre of the shining burned scalp spitting and sparking blue.

Stepping over Baeder, Dean walked past Crowley, moving along the hall to the other Grigori. Dietrich was dead, the eyes open and staring, but he put another bullet through the back and heart anyway. _Just in case_.

Turning back, Dean walked slowly back down the hall, stopping in front of the demon and looking at him coldly.

On the floor, Crowley looked up at him, focussed first on the small round hole at the end of the barrel, then gradually taking in the details of the man holding the gun behind it. Atropos had been wrong. The thought intruded suddenly, through the pain that coruscated up and down his leg. Bruised from head to foot, his blood smeared and still trickling from the wounds that had been inflicted over most of the skin the demon could see, staining the fabric of the jeans he wore, making a mask of the expressionless face, Dean Winchester was the one still standing, holding Colt's gun.

The barrel lifted and Crowley cowered back against the wall. Dean pulled the trigger and the gun clicked. On the floor, the demon sagged backwards, his vessel's heart pounding furiously, surges of mindless relief alternating with the acidic torture of the bullet in his leg.

Turning impatiently away, Dean broke the gun, his fingers automatically feeling and gathering five bullets from the front pocket of his jeans, pulling them out and slotting into them into the revolver's cylinder, his gaze locked onto the demon who was trying to crawl away down the hall, injured leg dragging behind him.

He slid the last one in and replaced the cylinder and breech, the click of the hammer on the empty chamber louder than the demon's frantic breaths. Walking unhurriedly after Crowley up the hall, Dean pulled back the hammer and the cylinder turned.

The demon stopped, twisting on his side as he stared back at the man behind him.

"Wait!" he said, moaning as the power of the bullet in his leg sucked at him. "I can–"

Dean pulled the trigger and Crowley fell backwards, his body convulsed with light. The Colt fired again, the bullet hitting the demon's vessel in the chest. The cylinder revolved and the hammer fell, the retorts echoing in the high-ceilinged hallway until it clicked empty again.

He leaned over, looking at the silver chain with its small silver medallion, hanging from the demon's hand. Reaching out, he curled his fingers around it, yanking it free of the stiffening fingers and turned away,

He could feel exhaustion and overload reaching for him, and he wasn't finished yet. _Do it by the numbers_, he told himself, reloading the Colt and tucking the medallion into his pocket. Chuck was in here somewhere, along with the tablet, and he had to get them out before he could acknowledge anything else.

Looking back down the hall, he thought the basement was probably the best bet and he walked back toward the kitchen, stumbling a little, the muscle in the point of his jaw jumping as he set his teeth and kept going.

* * *

Chuck was in the basement. The prophet was in a room at the end of the hall that ran east to west under the house. Dean opened the door and saw a body, lying on the floor between the table and wall. Leaning over, he put his fingers against the neck, straightening as nothing registered against them. A guard? It was possible. Bailed when it got an inkling.

At the table, Chuck was sitting upright, staring fixedly ahead, his hand moving fast over the notepaper, the other hand lying flat and hard against the stone tablet on the table top.

"Chuck," Dean said, walking unsteadily around the table. "Chuck!"

Chuck paid no attention to him, the conduit open in his mind, the Word flowing through him to the paper. Dean looked down at the pad and reached over, pulling it out from under Chuck's hand. Chuck kept writing, the pen digging into the wood of the table top and Dean let out a frustrated exhale.

He'd have to touch the tablet. He'd been okay before, but Chuck hadn't been plugged into it then, and he could see the faint glow in the stone, outlining the writer's hand where it rested over the symbols. He was going to collapse right here if he didn't keep going, he thought sourly, feeling the clawing pain creeping back up through his already-fried nerves.

_Don't think about it, just do it_, he told himself and his hand snapped out, gripping the edge of the stone and pulling it.

The backlash between himself, the stone tablet and the prophet was instant and immense.

Dean was flung across the room and Chuck was thrown back from the table as the connection broke, searing white light filling every corner of the basement room and whiting out every shadow and colour before it vanished back into the tablet.

"What the –" Chuck said, his hands pressing against his temples as a giant migraine headache pounded behind his eyes, colours smearing and bleeding into each other wherever he looked.

He saw Dean, crumpled on the floor at the far end of the room and got to his feet, weaving across the floor until he reached him.

"Dean!"

The hunter opened his eyes, blinking furiously as he tried to bring the writer's face into focus. "Chuck, you okay?"

"Yeah," Chuck said, looking down at him in shock. "Better than you are."

"That rock – got a kick, huh?"

"Is that what happened?" Chuck asked him in disbelief. "You touched it?"

"We have to go," Dean muttered, pushing himself upright and using the wall behind his back to help him to his feet.

"You could've been killed, grabbing it like that," Chuck marvelled, looking back over his shoulder at the table. "You're bleeding."

"Where?" Dean asked, leaning back against the wall and closing his eyes as an uncontrollable shudder wrenched through him.

"Everywhere," Chuck said, frowning. "You look like you've been–"

Dean heard the bewilderment in Chuck's voice slowly disappearing and knew that the writer was really looking at him now. He opened his eyes and pushed off the wall, grabbing Chuck's arm and forcing him around.

"Can you grab the stone now?"

"No, the conduit's still open – the headache –"

Which meant he had to do it, he thought uneasily, ignoring the rest of Chuck's explanation. "Think it'll throw me again?"

"No," Chuck said certainly. "That was because you got between me and the Word."

"Uh-huh."

"It should be okay now."

"Should be?"

Chuck smiled hesitantly. "Pretty sure it'll be fine now."

_Pretty sure_, Dean thought tiredly. He reached for the tablet, stopping as his fingers hovered above the stone. _Don't be a fucking girl_, he told himself. His hand curled around the stone and he felt something pass into him, a warmth or a peace or something that eased the agony throbbing in his body for a second's bright respite.

"Okay," he said, turning and gesturing to the doorway. "Let's go."

Holding the stone against his chest, he followed Chuck up the stairs.

* * *

_**Hell, Eighth Level**_

The Throne shuddered on its plinth, and every demon turned in the endless tunnels and caverns and pits of Hell, looking toward the Fifth Level.

Wind, formless and directionless and smelling of cold metal and acid, twisted through the rock, soughed through the thick wire of the nets, lifted and eddied over the molten lake and swept through the daeva in the abyss. It reached through the bonds holding the three, and they felt the diaphanous touch of the dark shrouds against skinless, bony faces, stepping back from each other, turning to look upward, like the rest, toward the Fifth Level and the golden throne it held.

"The demon is-s-s-s-s-s dead."

"The Faithless have fallen by his side."

The Throne should've protected the ruler, they knew. It should've protected their Prince as well. It hadn't. There was only one reason for that, but it wasn't time. Wasn't the _end_ of time. Minds, black and ancient and tortured into entirely new frequencies, joined together and searched through the width and breadth and depth of the planes, noting the changes as they saw them.

The Guardian of the Gates, dead. Raphael, dead. Heaven on the brink of civil war. Hell in chaos. The remaining Faithless in their fortresses, hiding from whatever had killed their brothers. Nintu, Dark Mother, walking free and her children awakening.

A time of chaos. A time of change.

* * *

_**Nahant, Massachusetts**_

Sam leaned against the Impala, legs still shaking as the heat and burn dissipated from his body from the last conflagration. In the east, along the endless line of the ocean's flat horizon, he could see the sky lightening. It was morning. He wasn't going anywhere.

The crack of a branch in the trees sharpened his attention and he pushed himself off the car, lifting his flashlight and flicking it on, the beam skating along the dark trunks and catching a pale face in its light.

He walked toward them, eyes widening as he saw Chuck half-carrying, half-dragging Dean beside him, his brother covered in blood and barely moving his feet.

"What the hell happened?" he asked Chuck, taking Dean's arm from him and wrapping his own around him, leaving Chuck to stumble along beside them.

"I'm not sure; he's not very coherent," the writer said, hurrying ahead of them and opening the rear door of the car, relieved to see the first aid kit already there. "They had him, were torturing him, I think, and he got away somehow, got the gun and killed them, came and broke the connection between me and the tablet …" he trailed off as Sam approached, realising the tall hunter wasn't really listening to him.

Sam eased Dean into the back seat, pressing his fingers against the side of his neck and feeling a wave of relief spread over him as he felt the steady heartbeat. Under the sharp brightness of the interior light of the car, he saw the cuts and bruising, the slashes and chunks of bloodied salt packed into Dean's shoulder and the longer, deeper open wounds on his back, rope burns circling his wrists, the iron shackles with their trailing ends of chain still fastened to his ankles. Tortured. _Yeah_, he thought, a ripple of nausea turning his stomach over slowly.

Clutched in one hand, Dean held the tablet, in the other, held bundled against the side of his chest, what was left of his clothes, Ruby's knife, the black metal knife of the Qaddiysh and the long black barrelled Colt. Looking down at the treasures his brother carried, Sam felt his mouth quirk up to one side.

"Dean," he said, gently uncurling his brother's fingers and moving the items piece by piece to the floor. He glanced at Chuck, sitting in the front seat. "You can't touch the tablet, can you?"

Chuck shook his head. "Not without going into a trance."

He couldn't touch it either, not comfortably. He decided to leave in it in Dean's grip. The shoulder needed cleaning out again, he thought, leaning over his brother to peer at it more closely. And the hole in his side was bleeding again. The rest of the cuts, although many, looked more superficial. He thought the bruising and trauma to the skin and muscle underneath would be worse than the cuts themselves. And trying to get him cleaned up might wake him. It could only have been the pain that'd put him under at this point. He didn't want to bring him back up to that.

Looking back over the front seat at the prophet, he gave Chuck a rueful smile. "Since Dean is fucked and I'm likely to burst into flames at any minute, that leaves you to get us home, I'm afraid."

Chuck's mouth dropped open and his eyes widened. "What?"

"Come on, don't tell me you haven't been dying to drive this car since you first wrote about it, Chuck," Sam said, pulling out the saline solution and the gauze dressings again. "He won't know."

* * *

_**I-70 W, Indiana**_

Chuck drove like an old lady, Sam thought, wrung out from the last hour of burning up and throwing up. Just as well maybe, given that Dean would kill him if he put a scratch on her.

He turned his head, feeling his neck creak as he looked into the back seat. Stretched out along it, a blanket loosely tucked around him, the tablet still clutched in one hand and resting on his chest, Dean had been out for the last fifty-two hours. They'd stopped in New York, just before they'd hit Pennsylvania, for a couple of hours, Chuck needing more meds and some sleep, and Sam needing to move around, the constant cramping in his limbs and abdomen becoming an intolerable torment after hours in the car.

He'd cleaned his brother up a little then, swallowing often as he catalogued the injuries, his imagination providing him with detailed suggestions as to how they'd been inflicted. He'd put stitches in the larger cuts, across his back where the lash had gone into muscle, and taped the rest, practically coating Dean's skin in Oliver's healing paste, hoping it would do the job. He'd been vaguely surprised to see that the bullet hole had closed again, noticeably smaller than when he'd re-dressed it the first time. The deep tears in Dean's shoulder had also seemed … smoother, less torn up … when he'd gone to change the dressings and re-pack it with the sweet-smelling unguent. His gaze fell on the tablet, and he stared at it uneasily, wondering if it had had anything to do with his brother's deep sleep, or the accelerated healing of the wounds.

At the rate Chuck was going, it would be another two days to get back to the keep. There was still no predictability to the … _attacks? episodes? proddings of an unmerciful God?_ He could feel almost-fine one minute and be rigid the next, unable to move or breathe, every cell in his body feeling as if it had been filled with acid, the burning penetrating deeper each time it happened.

_This blood, it's not in you the way it's in me._

He remembered saying that to Dean, in the car, driving away from Carthage and his heart hammering against his ribs with the replays of Jack Montgomery's transformation going on and on in his mind.

The blood had been there since he'd been six months old. He'd thought it would always be there, something he would always have to live with, like – like the possibility of a remission.

He didn't think that now.

He'd watched the blood spill out of his brother when he'd taken the vampire cure. Ejected by the cure's ingredients, by the alchemical process and the way they'd interacted to draw it, cell by cell, from his arteries and veins and capillaries, returning it to his stomach so that it could be expelled for good.

Only the penitent could close the gates of Hell. In the translations, Alex's transcriptions from Chuck's notes, that was what the applicant to the trials had been called.

The _Penitent_.

Repentant. Contrite. Humble and seeking forgiveness from God.

The definitions played through his mind. He was closer now. But he guessed that the physical evil had to be burned out before much else could progress. The thought terrified him.

_Bless me, Father, for I have sinned_.

Would he have to confess his sins? Out loud? To someone else? He wasn't sure he could go that far, be that naked and vulnerable in front of someone. Dean knew what he'd done but his brother couldn't talk to him about it. The times he'd tried to apologise, to explain, had only made things worse between them. He hadn't understood then, but he understood it now. Dean had already known the explanations. What he couldn't do was hear Sam say it aloud. Say it to him.

Pride was the Father of all sins, and Greed the mother, he'd heard that somewhere once. Pride had been his sin. Was it still? How could he be sure that he wasn't still acting from his pride, telling himself that there'd been reasons for what he'd done? He knew the answer to that too. He was. Still. And the blood was being burned out of him, ejected from him, the contract he'd signed willingly was going to force him into purity and test him unto death.


	18. Chapter 18 The Straits of Fear

**Chapter 18 The Straits of Fear**

* * *

_**Heaven**_

Castiel looked around the light-filled room resignedly. It didn't look like a prison, but it was. He'd been here for nine weeks, as the humans counted time, long enough to know that whatever had happened in the settlements was long over, and long enough to know that either Dean or Sam or both would probably have begun the trials.

His return to Heaven had been confusing, Gabriel disappearing in search of Michael, and three of the seraphim who served Raguel escorting him here, asking him to wait for the commander. He'd waited for some time before he'd decided to try and find Michael himself. And it had been then that he'd realised he was in a prison. No door marred the smooth walls. He could not reach out to his brothers, in mind or heart or body. He was, in fact, stuck.

Most of his time here had been spent in meditation, trying to separate the facts from the rumours, from the half-truths and outright lies he'd been told. It had become clear to him that Raphael may have been leading the rebels but he was not the only architect of the conspiracy to change the rule of Heaven. He wondered vaguely who had been hiding more deeply in the shadows, content to direct without showing themselves. There were not many who had the power and the motivation to manoeuvre the Divine plane into the chaos in which it was now enveloped. Only the archangels could control the lower ranks. Only the archangels could hope to contend Michael's command of the Host. And there were only four of the seven remaining.

He blinked and looked up as a rustle of wings announced his visitor.

"Castiel, my deepest apologies," the angel who stood before him said, the tenor voice inflected with a regret that Cas doubted was real.

He got to his feet, looking at the construct of Camael. Tall and well-built as they all were, with long hair, the colour of burnished wheat, flowing over shoulders and between the rose-tinted grey wings. The archangel had been … promoted, Castiel decided, for lack of a better description … to the Voice of God when Metatron had fled Heaven, and had taken his duties seriously for two millennium.

"Camael, what's going on?" the angel said, stepping closer. "Where is Michael? I was told he needed to see me – weeks ago! By whose orders have I been –"

"Michael has been putting down the rebel faction, Castiel," Camael said, one hand lifting and gesturing vaguely. "After Raphael's death, they united and attempted to take over, it was only the strength of the Host that kept the Pillars in place. He has been in a state of meditation since the rout, seeking answers from our Father."

"And Gabriel?"

"Gabriel in on the lower plane," the archangel told him, his wings shivering restlessly. "The Grigori have risen in Asia and Europe, they have been using a spell to raise the dead."

"Raise the dead?" Cas frowned at him. "For what purpose?"

"They are trying to build an army, we believe," Camael said, his face expressionless. "Raguel needs to speak to you, he asks that you be patient – he will not be long, but this –" He gestured at the walls of the room. "– is necessary, until he can get here."

"Necessary?"

"The rebels know that you have helped the humans, Castiel," Camael said quietly. "You are in danger every moment you are in Heaven – they have sworn to kill you."

Castiel studied the archangel's face. Angels did not lie. Except when they did. He'd spent a lot of time with the Winchesters, had learned something from Dean's ability to tell a liar when faced with one.

"So this prison, it's for my safety?" he asked, without emphasis.

"Precisely. To keep you safe," Camael agreed. "It won't be much longer, I can promise you that." He turned away. "Raguel did need to know if you can tell us the locations for the human settlements?"

"You can't find them?"

The archangel shook his head. "They are hidden now. Raguel is worried that if they need help we won't be able to find them to provide assistance in time."

Cas opened his mouth automatically, obediently, to give the locations of the keeps in Kansas and camps in Michigan and hesitated. "I do not have those locations, Camael," he said instead, looking into the other's eyes as the arch turned to look at him.

"Really?"

Cas shrugged. "I find the Winchesters when they pray for assistance, otherwise their location is hidden to me as well."

He watched the archangel turn away again, the shifting grey feathers of the huge wings resettling in an unconscious gesture he found reminiscent of a feline's tail twitching, restlessly.

"Do you know what is happening on the lower plane, Camael?"

The question appeared to surprise the angel, and Cas sighed inwardly. Curiosity was not a thing of angels, not usually. Friendship wasn't really either.

"To the humans, you mean?" Camael asked, one dark gold brow rising at the seraphim's nod.

"The settlements were overrun by the army controlled by the demon," he said briskly. "I believe they took some hostages and the prophet and the stone. The humans pursued them but failed to recover the prophet."

Cas felt his heart sink. "What happened?"

"The Grigori killed the hostages and escaped," Camael said, a faint crease marring the perfect brow. "The Winchesters did continue the pursuit, and have completed the first trial. I'm not sure how, but the demon king and the fallen with him were also killed. I believe they have retrieved the prophet and stone now."

"What about the creation forces?"

"One has been recaptured. The other is still free," Camael said shortly, his head tilted to one side as he heard the summons. "I have to leave, Castiel, I will send word soon."

Cas felt the soft rush of air past him as the archangel disappeared. Dean and Sam had been busy, he thought, a little flush of guilt at leaving them alone in their time of need spreading through him. He wondered which hostages had been taken and what effect had had on the brothers. Dean would regret any death on their behalf, he knew, but some would wound more deeply than others.

He turned his thoughts to what the archangel had said … and had not said.

* * *

_**West Keep, Kansas. May 17, 2013.**_

The Impala crawled through the gates as people gathered around, Chuck's eyes screwing up tight as he tried to make out the narrow road through the sparks and spears of light that were blinding him. The migraine was heavy and thick in his head, every sound drilling into him, the light too bright, and his stomach clenching and spasming with every bump on the road.

"Chuck!" Rufus veered aside as the car hopped toward him. "Christ, stop!"

He reached the driver's door and yanked it open, stamping a foot on the brake and stalling the engine as Chuck toppled sideways into Sam, his eyes rolled back and showing only white.

"Get Merrin and Bob, now!" Rufus yelled at the crowd, looking back into the car's interior. Sam was out cold, leaning against the passenger door; in the back seat, Dean was also out, his face and arms criss-crossed by cuts and slashes and bruising rising in a rainbow of dark colours over all that Rufus could see of him. _What the fuck had happened to them?_

"Fred, open the passenger door, you and Franklin take Sam out and up to Ward Two," Merrin's cold, crisp voice said behind him and he turned, breathing a sigh of relief as she took complete control. "Vince, you and Peter get Dean out – carefully," she added as she saw the blood-soaked blanket pulled over him. She looked through the driver's door at the writer and nodded to herself.

"Elias, can you take Chuck up? He's out but it looks like one of his migraines, I can't see any other injuries. He can go into the office."

The auburn-haired hunter nodded and leaned past her, surprisingly gentle as he extracted Chuck from the seat and lifted him out, Nate behind him to take the prophet's feet and legs.

"I'll move the car," Rufus said to no one in particular as the three men were carried up to the keep and the crowd began to dissipate.

* * *

Bob lifted Dean's eyelid, the small penlight flashing across the eyes from side to side as he noted the pupil response. "He's deep," he said to Merrin. "I'll need some help with the exam."

"Sam's burning up," the nurse said abruptly, her brows drawn together. "I have to get back there, Marla's with him but he's presenting SV tach and I need to get his heart back to a steady rhythm."

"I can help," Zoe said from the doorway. "Candy striped through two years, I can do the dirty work."

"You're hired," Bob said wearily, nodding at Merrin as she left. "Get his feet, we'll cut everything off once he's on the table."

Zoe nodded, lifting as the doctor did, Dean moved from the gurney to the padded table in the one smooth action.

Bob's breath left his chest in a sharp exhale as he cut the shirt free and looked down at Dean's chest. "Christ, what happened?"

"Those are whip cuts," Elias said from behind him, straightening up from the doorway and walking to the table.

Cutting up the outside seam of the jeans, Zoe glanced over her shoulder at the hunter and back to the torn up chest. "The shoulder wound isn't."

"No," Bob said as he eased the dressing off. "That's an animal bite."

"He goin' to be alright, doc?" Elias asked.

Bob looked at him in surprise. He'd only been working with the hunters for a few months, but no matter what the injuries were, none of them ever seemed to feel that they were life-threatening.

"Yes, if we can keep him quiet, he'll recover."

"With the use of that arm?"

Bob turned to look down at the shoulder, suddenly understanding the man's concern. "I think so."

"You need help with anything?" Elias asked him, flicking a glance at Zoe.

"No, we'll manage," Bob said, seeing the glance. "Check with Merrin though, we're short-handed right now."

"Right."

He left the room and Bob turned to watch Zoe cut through the seam of the jeans over the hip. He saw the bloodied mess under the cloth and swallowed suddenly. "Zoe, get hot water and the antibacterial soap, gauze and cloths, would you?"

She stopped cutting and looked at him. "I'm almost finished –"

"I'll finish the cutting," he cut her off, gesturing sharp to the door. "And tell Merrin I need broad-spec antibiotics, an IV bag of morphine and another of D5 1/2NS, and her help in about five minutes."

"Sure," she said, turning for the door.

* * *

Merrin came in four minutes later, glanced past Bob to Dean and told Zoe to go and keep an eye on Chuck.

When the door had closed, she moved beside Bob, looking clinically over the unconscious body in front of her as she set up the bags and laid out the tray.

Bob glanced at her. "You don't look surprised."

"I worked in the Middle East for a few years," she said neutrally. "Saw a lot of this. How's the BP?"

"Not too bad," Bob said. "I don't think blood loss is the problem. I want to keep him out completely for a few days."

She smiled wryly. "I can tell you now that Dean has a very high threshold for pain, but we'll keep him under for a while."

Picking up the warm saline, she began to clean away the dried and crusted blood, working her way up from mid-thigh gently as Bob sluiced out the shoulder and looked at the collarbone.

* * *

_**May 22, 2013**_

_The darkness thinned out, little by little and he became aware of his surroundings, turning slowly as he looked around. The mountains towered along the horizon, peak after peak, grey and blue and purple, capped with snow and sheltering what remained of the city that nestled at the foot of the ranges. Familiarity tugged at him, but he could see only a handful of buildings in the thick woods that had grown up along the slopes of the foothills and none sparked a positive identification. Behind him, the sun was rising and a wide plain stretched out, tall grass bowing and shivering in the vagrant breeze. He looked at the north eastern sky, brows drawing together as he saw a black line along the edge, growing wider and deeper as he watched … _

… _the noise registered slowly, a deep thud-thud and he looked around, searching for the source, feeling the sound through the soles of his boots, in the marrow of his bones. Marching, he thought suddenly. That was the sound of thousands of feet, marching in unison. An army. He looked at the mountains and back to the plain, unable to see anything but the fields and woods, and the clouds, getting closer, casting a dark shadow over the land beneath them … _

… _he staggered back as a man appeared in front of him, tall and narrow-shouldered, a long black coat cut with a wide skirt that swung out as he turned. White-blond hair swirled out with the motion, gathered at the nape of the man's neck and pale grey eyes, so pale he thought at first the irises weren't there, staring at him coldly. The man laughed and raised a short-handled whip, dozens of thongs curling and twisting as he drew it back and Dean leapt backward as they whistled toward him, not far enough, the pain of the hardened and knotted ends cutting into his bare skin. He looked down, seeing the red lines patterned over him and felt a black rage filling him … _

… _he was kneeling, his knees stabbed by the sharp-pointed gravel, trying not to see the sightless stare, eyeballs coated thinly in dust that hid the colour of the irises, trying not to believe what he'd known when the first shot had cracked through the air, he jerked backward as the eyes blinked, the dust washed out by tears, unable to bear the sight, unable to just drop her onto the gravel, a shiver reaching right through him, his hands shaking as she kept blinking, and her eyes focussed on him … _

… _the vampire leaned over him, mouth bright red against the ebony skin, his blood, he knew, dripping back down onto him – _do you want to live?_ – he shook his head, feeling his strength ebbing out of him as the head dipped and pain screeched through him, blood pulled from the artery, his heart beating faster – _do you want to live?_ – he screamed, the sound ripping through his throat and mind and soul as he drove the blade through the vampire's neck and wrenched at it, severing the head, cold blood pouring over him, filling his eyes as he pushed the body off him …_

… _the pain wasn't stopping and he stumbled forward, the fallen angel lifting a knife and bringing it down, over and over into the swollen abdomen of the woman lying in front of him, single blue-grey turning to him and the misshapen mouth hissing – _does it hurt now? Can you feel it, Winchester?_ And it did, writhing through him, clawing and biting and gnawing, too much pain and no overload – was he dead? – he lifted the gun and pulled the trigger – _stop! Stop it! I don't want to feel! I don't want to feel anything! Ever!

Dean snapped awake, the painkiller flowing through his bloodstream unable to keep him under through the pain that riddled his body, unable to keep the dreams locked up. He dragged in a deep breath, freezing into immobility as a biting wave of acid flooded through him, the blood draining from his face, leaving the bruises standing out like rotten blooms, mottling his skin.

"Dean," a high, gentle voice beside him and warmth around his hand, enclosed in two others, smaller, holding his tightly.

The pain ebbed away gradually and he opened his eyes, narrowing them again immediately at the too-bright light. A soft bed under him, though it didn't stop the fierce jabs and bites and grinding ache in his back; soft sheets pulled over him, but still he could feel the smooth fabric catching on his skin, on the scabs and stitches and dressings, tearing at him. He let his eyes open a little wider as they adjusted to the light, seeing a vaguely-familiar face beside him, warm café-au-lait skin and dark brown eyes, looking at him, worried now.

"Zoe?" he asked, his voice unrecognisable through a throat of glass and sand and shrapnel. His mouth and tongue were coated in something dead, he thought, swallowing painfully as his stomach rolled.

"Don't talk," she said, squeezing his hand and releasing it gently, turning to the nightstand to get a glass of water with a straw. He felt the scabs over his face pull at his skin as he tried to frown at the incongruity of the gesture.

"Just drink a little at a time," she instructed him, holding the straw next to his mouth, guiding it in. "You've been out for a few days and on some pretty serious painkillers."

The water was ice-cold and he felt his tongue and mouth and throat swelling with it, the taste washed away, the nausea subsiding a little.

"Do you have a lot of pain?" she asked when he pulled back from the straw. "You shouldn't even be awake yet."

"Wh-at ha-ppened?" he croaked at her, wincing as an incautious attempt to move pulled at … everything.

"You don't remember?"

He felt her take his hand in hers again and his eyes narrowed slightly as he looked at her, the gesture too personal, the indecisiveness of her answer bringing irritation.

"Get … the … doc," he managed to grate out, his eyes darkening with the rancid bite of pain in his shoulder as he pulled his hand away.

"Dean, it's alright," she said, looking down at his hand. "It's going to be okay."

The words stirred a tenuous memory and he felt a doubling sensation, reliving a mixture of relief and confusion, of longing and doubt. It flickered briefly in his mind and faded away, too amorphous to keep hold of.

Closing his eyes, he braced himself and cleared his throat, turning cautiously to look back at her. "Get the doc," he told her again, his voice more like he remembered and the warning in it clear.

She hesitated, then nodded, getting up and going to the door and he tried to relax the tension that had knotted up in his shoulder, sending flashes of pain down through his chest and up into his neck.

* * *

Bob Malley walked in a minute later, looking at the sweat that sheened his patient's face. Zoe came in behind and walked around the bed to pick up a soft cloth, leaning over to wipe it away. Bob saw Dean jerk away, face screwing up with the pain the movement caused and he caught Zoe's hand.

"Leave it," he told her. "See if Merrin needs a hand with anything, please."

She dropped the cloth back in the basin of water and walked out with a stiff-backed rigidity that was apparent to both men.

"What the hell …?" Dean said, looking at Malley.

"She's been a little … protective … of you, since Chuck got you back," Bob said apologetically, closing the door and dragging a chair to the bedside.

Dean digested that in silence. He didn't know what to make of it.

"Pain's pretty bad?" the doctor asked, leaning toward the IV and adjusting the flow slightly.

"You could say that," Dean grunted. "How long have I been here?"

"Four days."

"What?"

Bob turned at the shock in his voice and smiled. "You were worked over pretty hard, Dean. Between that and whatever got your shoulder, you're lucky to be here at all."

Memories surfaced and he turned away from them. He'd need more time before he could look at them without the associated physical sensations rising as well.

"Where's Sam?"

"Sam's fine, he's at the order," Bob said, walking around the bed and wringing out the cloth, wiping Dean's face and neck clinically as he looked carefully at the cuts and bruising. "The burning sensations have been recurring, but he says that the effects are diminishing now."

_And that was pure bullshit_, Dean thought, eyes half-closing as Malley drew back the covers gently and he felt the cooler air brush over his skin.

"Couldn't do much about modesty, I'm afraid," Bob said prosaically. "Too much damage all over and I didn't want anything to rub."

"What about his heart?" Dean ignored the doctor's scrutiny of his wounds and focussed on his brother.

"It's fine," Bob said, lifting the dressing over the bullet wound and looking at it closely. "You really are a fast healer."

"What do you think is causing the – uh, temperature fluctuations in Sam?" Dean pressed.

"Temperature fluctuations? That's one way to put it, I suppose," Bob said, drawing the covers back up with a dry smile. "Sam thinks that the contract with God is burning the demon blood out of him."

Dean blinked.

"He told you?"

"Told me as much as I needed to know," Bob confirmed with a slight shrug. "What's happening to him isn't anywhere on the scale of normal. Father Emilio and I agreed that, given the circumstances, he'd be better off at the order, with those who understand what's happening to him taking care of him."

"But he's okay?"

"No," Bob shook his head. "No more than you are. He's alive and I believe that he'll survive. He's in enormous pain when it happens, and I've given them some medications to help with that, although I think he's doing better on what Oliver has made up for him."

He sat down again, gesturing to Dean's shoulder. "You, on the other hand, are going to lose the use of your right arm unless you give it the time to heal properly."

Dean looked at him, chewing on the corner of his lower lip as he weighed the likelihood of Malley being right.

Seeing his doubt, Bob clarified. "It was a devil of a job to get the collarbone realigned, Dean. You were hung by your wrists?" He paused as Dean nodded unwillingly. "It pulled everything out. I'm not a hundred percent sure it's all back correctly, but I can't do anything else with it until the ends rejoin. Then we can see if it's straight and if not, rebreak and reset it."

"Collarbone – even a crooked one – isn't going to fuck up my arm, doc," Dean told him acerbically.

"No," Malley agreed. "But the muscles behind and around your shoulder were repeatedly torn and pulled apart. They are not going to heal up right unless they have enough rest. There's no infection, but to be honest, I've never seen such a mess. I've drawn everything back together as much as possible, and you're still pretty young, young enough to heal well, if you give it a chance."

Dean looked away. "Might not be up to me."

"It'll have to be up to you – or you better start learning to do everything with your left hand."

"How long?"

"A few weeks," Bob told him, getting to his feet and looking at the drip. "Are you feeling more comfortable?"

"No." Dean scowled at the wall, thinking of what could happen in a few weeks without him around. "Yeah," he added, seeing the doctor's expression. "I'm – uh, hungry."

"Good," Bob said. "I'll get someone to bring something up."

* * *

_**May 24, 2013**_

What we do here is rewire the mind_, Alastair said conversationally to Dean as he stood beside the demon and they both looked at the man stretched out on the rack in front of them. _For some, the boundary between pain and pleasure is thin to begin with. For others, it takes longer_. He felt the demon's speculative gaze on him and kept his gaze fixed on the victim_.

The memory surfaced in conjunction with the deep ache of his body. The swelling had gone down, mostly. He was black and blue from shoulders to thighs, front and back, and nothing worked particularly well. The drip was gone, the pleasant, floating feeling too addictive psychologically, never mind physically. He wanted to be able to think, needed to be able to think. Needed to be able to shut down some thoughts as well.

Looking out through the deep, narrow embrasure at the cloudless sky he could see, Dean realised that the memory hadn't frightened him, hadn't brought with it the old fluxing wash of pain and shame and guilt. _The only thing you did was try to stop the pain_.

Maybe she'd been right, he thought, the inward flinch at the memory of her voice, her words, familiar and fleeting. In the Grigori's half-frozen face, he'd seen enjoyment, pleasure, mingled with the rage, with the frustration that had been taken out on him. He'd thought … he'd felt … for a long time, that he'd felt that too, but seeing it in someone else, he realised that wasn't the truth. Not the whole truth, at least. _You're not a monster, Dean. You never have been. If you'd truly enjoyed it, why would you feel so ashamed by what you did now?_

He closed his eyes, wishing suddenly for the detached and uncaring relief of the morphine, the bright, sharp yearning that filled him hurting worse than anything he felt physically, bringing the memories that tore through him more agonisingly than those he had of Hell.

The door opened and he registered the sound, the muscle in his jaw jumping as he forced it all away, eyelids screwed tight with effort of pushing it all back down where he couldn't feel it, where it couldn't keep aching.

"Bacon today," Zoe's voice was cheerful and high. "Eggs, too."

Pulling in a deep breath, ignoring the various stabs and bolts of pain the movement brought, he opened his eyes and tried to look enthusiastic.

"Thanks."

She set the tray on the bed, picking up the cutlery and starting to cut up the food. Malley had taped and strapped the right shoulder down firmly, his arm held in a sling to keep movement to a bare minimum. He could feed himself if the pieces were small enough to get into his mouth.

"You want some help?" she asked him, handing him the fork. He shook his head as he stabbed a piece of bacon, driving the tines through a cut-up section of egg and toast as well.

She made him uneasy, he realised, keeping his gaze on the food and trying to ignore his awareness of her watching him eat. Anyone would have made him uncomfortable in this situation, but he felt her constant attention on him, and there was something else, something that he couldn't get to come to the surface, some memory just out of reach.

After a couple of mouthfuls, he looked up at her. "Why aren't you working with the others?"

She knew what he meant. She was a hunter, in training, but nonetheless, a hunter.

"Merrin's got a full ward and all her nurses are spread around the county, checking on the pregnancies," she told him, getting up as she registered the faint but underlying hostility. She walked around the room, a little aimlessly, straightening the covers, refilling the water jug on the nightstand. "She needed someone to help out with you because Rudy and Adam are still under full time care as well."

He accepted the explanation with reservations, looking back at the plate to stab more food. "Yeah, well, you can tell her that I'm okay to look after myself now."

Zoe turned to look at him, pushing back her thick, dark hair. "You're not, you know," she said softly, coming back to the bedside. "You need someone to look after you."

Debating the advisability of opening this can of worms, he hesitated and stared at the plate beside him. She sat on the bed, leaning over and his gaze snapped up as her hand brushed down his cheek.

"What's going on?" he asked, pulling back from the touch sharply, the fork clattering loudly on the china as he dropped it.

"You don't remember?" she asked, smiling a little. "You were pretty out of it, but you–"

The door opened and Father Emilio looked in. Dean saw him take in the situation and felt a wash of relief when the Jesuit stepped into the room and Zoe shifted back on the bed, away from him.

"Sorry," Father Emilio said, his expression neutral. "I can come back later if you are busy?"

"No," Dean said quickly, glancing down and picking up the fork, stabbing the last few pieces of food together and stuffing the load into his mouth as he put the fork back on the plate. He tucked the food into his cheek and looked back at the priest. "Now's good."

He heard the impatient huff from the woman beside him as she picked up the plate and fork and got off the bed. _Out of it_, he thought distractedly. When had he been out of it? He sighed inwardly. The last few weeks, quite a few times.

The priest opened the door wide and stood aside to let Zoe leave, then turned and closed the door behind her. He glanced back at Dean.

"How are you feeling?"

Dean swallowed the mouthful and inched himself toward the glass on the nightstand. "Not great. You got any info on what's going on?"

"Plenty," Father Emilio said, walking around the bed and picking up the glass to hand to him. "Not all good, you understand."

"Thrill me."

"Oliver has extracted a sufficient quantity of Cerberus' blood from your clothes and Sam's to provide entry and exit to Hell," Father Emilio said, dragging the chair across and sitting down.

"Okay, good," Dean said, wondering what the Jesuit was reluctant to talk about. "How's Sam? What about the … attacks, or whatever they are?"

"They are still going on, not as frequently now," the priest said. "He is having difficulty sleeping. And eating."

Dean's brows drew together. "But he's getting some, right?"

"Some," Father Emilio agreed reservedly. "He believes that he is being purged of the taint in his blood."

Dean looked at him, wondering how many people Sam'd told. "Yeah, but that – uh – that's a good thing, isn't it?"

For a moment, Father Emilio didn't answer, and Dean felt his stomach drop, the food in it uncomfortably heavy.

"Yes," the Jesuit said, firmly. "Yes, I believe it to be a good thing."

"Alright." Dean watched him, realising he didn't know want to know anything else. "What about Chuck?"

"Chuck had another vision," Father Emilio told him. "This one we cannot place."

"What do you mean?"

"It was fragmented, like the visions he had of you in Hell," Emilio said carefully. "Not a progression, but a series of images, of scenes."

"Describing what?"

"He saw an army –"

"Christ, not another one," Dean groaned, turning away. "Come on!"

The Jesuit's mouth twisted up to one side wryly. "This army was on a vast plain, the mountains behind them –"

Dean blinked at the familiarity of that image, losing the next few words as the priest kept talking.

"– then he saw a lake, he said, of lava or magma, filling an enormous stone cavern, and an entity that was shrouded in black cloth," Father Emilio continued, not noticing Dean's withdrawal. "We believe that the third trial will be to kill an archdemon."

"Kill an archdemon," Dean repeated slowly. "With what?"

"Lucifer's sword."

"That Sam has to get out of the cage?"

"Yes."

"Peachy."

The Jesuit snorted softly. "There's more."

"Naturally," Dean agreed, resignation filling his voice. "There's always more."

"There is a possibility that the conspiracy in Heaven was not stopped with Raphael's death," Father Emilio said.

"Yeah, well, figured that since Cas hasn't been back," Dean said, looking away.

"Dean, I would like your permission to take the notes Alex left in your home," Father Emilio asked, watching the hunter's face. "She was very thorough in her analysis and there may be more she saw that she didn't have a chance to tell us."

_Take her notes_, the words dropped into him. He felt anger stirring, far down, at the idea.

"Sure, get what you need," he said, forcing himself to keep that anger where it was, looking away.

"I'm sorry," Father Emilio said. "We need all the information we can find."

Dean shook his head slightly. "It's alright," he said brusquely, pushing aside the images that came to him of the priest going through the apartment, looking, touching, removing. "I don't –"

He stopped, uncertain of what he'd about to say.

The Jesuit looked at him, his face expressionless but a deeper understanding in the dark brown eyes. "You're not ready to let go, that's understandable."

Dean looked him unwillingly. "I don't think that's it."

"What do you think it is?"

"I don't know," he said, the doubt that lurked behind everything darkening his eyes.

"Perhaps, for now, you can't afford the distraction of grief?" Father Emilio suggested diffidently.

"Yeah, maybe."

He didn't know if that was it. He couldn't look at any of it without the rage coming back. "I thought, uh, when I killed them, it would go."

The Jesuit studied him carefully. "Avenging her?"

"Yeah."

"But it hasn't?" the priest asked, coming to understand a little more of the enigmatic man lying in the bed beside him. "The anger is still there?"

"Yeah."

The silence stretched out between them, Father Emilio watching Dean withdraw again, his face shuttered and his gaze dropping. He thought of what he knew of the man, what he'd been told, what he'd seen for himself, what Sam had told him.

"The pain of betrayal wounds the soul, Dean," he said softly. "It cannot be understood and therefore takes the longest to heal."

He drew in a deep breath, getting to his feet. "You made a deal and you thought things would be safe, she would be safe, but nothing is safe, not forever, not guaranteed. Perhaps that is why the anger remains?"

Dean heard him leave the room, the door closing behind him with a soft click. He didn't think that was it, either. It didn't matter, not really, he realised tiredly. The job was still there, the sons of bitches who'd brought it all on, still there. He thought he'd be the one, but it was going to be Sam, and all that was left for him to do was to make sure, make certain, that his brother got the chance to finish what he'd started, whether it killed him or not.

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Kansas**_

In the quiet of the library, Jerome winced as he drew in a deep breath, resettling his glasses on his nose. The wound would take a long time to heal, he thought, a little annoyed at the inconvenience of it. He could barely remember now how grateful he'd been that he'd woken up at all.

Katherine cleared her throat, on the other side and down the table a few chairs, looking up at Baraquiel.

"When Lucifer fell, his army had been defeated," she said without preamble, the Qaddiysh turning belatedly to her as he realised she was addressing him. He nodded.

"His … lieutenants were shorn of their wings and fell into the abyss with him?" she continued, her gaze sharpening as she saw she had his attention. "But the rest, those surviving angels who were not cast down – what happened to them?"

"Those who did not desert before the end were taken back to Heaven," Baraquiel told her mildly. "They served their penance and made atonement under the watch of Raguel."

Jasper frowned. "The archangel?"

Baraquiel nodded. "Raguel is second in command of the Host, his purview is order and justice, for angel and human."

"Alright," Katherine said, looking back at the typed pages of the demonologies in front of her. "But none were demonified, as the archdemons were?"

"No," Baraquiel said, frowning as he tried to follow her thoughts. "What have you found?"

"There is a reference here to an angel who became a demon, and an angel who controls demons," she said, her voice a little acerbic. "It's not clear who it's referring to and I was wondering if the –"

"The angel who became a demon was Azazel," Baraquiel interrupted gently. "He Fell with us, at God's request, to teach humanity. He – he lost his child, sometime after we'd settled in the south. It changed him. He went to the Grigori, and he never returned. He orchestrated a massacre, a great wave of deaths in the north and opened a gate, and Lucifer demanded that he be sent to Hell rather than killed outright. God agreed."

"And the angel who controls demons?" Jasper asked, elbow on the table and chin cupped in his hand.

"Kokabiel," Penemue said, walking out between the stacks with an armful of books. "You met him in Jordan, Jasper."

A flash of an older face, perfectly sculpted but etched with aeons of experience, and knowledge in the long, narrow amber eyes, filled the scholar's mind and he nodded.

"Kokabiel was the liaison between Heaven and Hell, in the old days," Baraquiel said, the colloquialism coming easily. "He controlled two hundred and fifty seven thousand demons, could call on them, direct them with his will to undertake work for Heaven as it was required."

Elena's brows shot up. "What would Heaven need with demons?"

Penemue sat down at the table between her and Peter, his face creasing in a dry smile. "Our Father's wrath would be expressed, from time to time, against the primitive impulses of mankind. Sometimes sending a horde of demons was more effective than using the angels."

"What is the reference, Katherine?" Baraquiel asked.

"I'm not sure what to make of it, to be frank," she said, looking at the page. "It seems to be a prophecy of some kind, but not one written by a human – this is included in the history of Hell."

"Even demons have their seers," Penemue said, shrugging slightly. "Most of the so-called prophecies originating in Hell were Lucifer's, not so much prophecy as wishful thinking."

"What does it say?" Baraquiel threw a quelling look at the dark-haired _Irin_.

"_In the times of the last days, in the times of the end of our time in the acid and flame, the angels will call and we will rise again, to march out of the abyss against human and angel, to the Last Battle, and we will be legion, led by the Faithless and given power over the living and the dead_."

She looked at him. "Faithless?"

Baraquiel shook his head. "It is what the demons call the Grigori –"

"What the archdemons called the Grigori," Penemue corrected him. "Betrayers and traitors of Lucifer."

"This refers to the time that humanity will no longer have need of Heaven and Hell?" Jasper looked at them. "When the gates were supposed to be closed because of that?"

Penemue nodded. "The Last Battle – there is a vaguely similar story in Heaven, of the angels descending to meet the demons in a war. It was written into the history more or less as a footnote as there didn't seem to be that much purpose for such a war. It was always thought that the Penitent would be human."

"A diversion, perhaps?" Peter looked at him. "Surely the demons wouldn't be standing still while the gates were closed on them forever?"

"Perhaps," Penemue said with a shrug.

"What does it mean – power over the living and the dead?" Jerome looked down the table at him.

"I don't know," Baraquiel answered, his gaze flicking sideways to his brother.

At the end of the table, Father Emilio looked at Father McConnaughey, one brow raised. Chuck's vision of the army was beginning to make more sense.

"Baraquiel, perhaps you could explain simply the structure of Heaven?" Father Emilio asked, forestalling what he knew the older priest wanted to ask.

"The structure?" Baraquiel turned to him, one brow raised quizzically. "You know the structure, Emilio."

"Humour me," the Jesuit said, dark eyes holding a faint amusement. "We have seen the deaths of Uriel and Raphael, but there were seven archangels in Heaven, and each had their task – what now do they do?"

"The seven," Baraquiel said slowly, looking at Penemue for a moment then back to the priest. "They were Michael and Gabriel, Uriel and Raphael, Raguel, Sariel and Camael."

"Michael commands the Host, he leads the seraphim, oldest of the seven," Penemue said. "Gabriel is the angel of vengeance, the weapon of God and the guardian of the planes. Raphael was the teacher, once. Uriel was second in command to Gabriel, as Raguel is to Michael. Sariel –" he stopped, looking down at the table.

"Sariel Fell, with us," Baraquiel said. "He is in Jordan, mortal now."

"And Camael?"

"Camael took over the role of Voice and Scribe, when Metatron fled," Penemue said. "He spoke to God, passed on his instructions, kept the histories, and the library."

"So there are only four left?" Katherine looked at the Qaddiysh, wondering how important that was and why the Jesuit had felt it necessary to bring that out.

"Yes."

"Chuck saw an army of demons, marching east," Father McConnaughey said, looking at them. "Is there a chance that the army in the vision is the army that Katherine has mentioned?"

"There is a chance," Penemue said, turning to him. "But Crowley is dead, and the archdemons have been loosed from whatever spell he used to bind them. It is not the time for them, for the end –"

"But it is," Father McConnaughey said, leaning forward. "The messenger was clear on that, the gates had to be closed before the archdemons could get free – what if this is why? To prevent them from raising an army to finish what Heaven seems to have set in motion?"

"We haven't found a way to close the gates without closing Hell itself," Jerome interjected thoughtfully. "It must be on the tablet, somewhere, but Chuck hasn't come across it yet. And it provides sufficient motivation to bring a war to this plane, doesn't it?"

* * *

Father Emilio leaned against the desk, looking down at his friend. Father McConnaughey was flicking through the books the order possessed on Heaven, the angelologies and non-canonical texts, the piles divided to either side of him into those he'd been through and those he hadn't.

"Did Jerome send the request to the other chapters?" Father McConnaughey asked without looking up, the pages rustling as he turned them quickly.

The Jesuit nodded tiredly. He would have to sleep soon, but before that he wanted to speak to Sam. "Yes, they're all looking for any reference to the demon's prophecy or to any mention of an army of demons."

"You believe we're being manipulated," the older priest said quietly, flicking over the pages as he scanned the few pictures that had been painted and drawn of some of the seraphim who'd been seen on this plane.

"I am afraid that is the explanation," Father Emilio admitted. "The disappearance of the Winchesters' angel friend – the timing of everything that has happened in the past three months, Sean, there are no coincidences, this you know too well."

"I saw an angel," the priest said stubbornly. "I do realise that under the circumstances my faith was renewed in that moment, but still, Emilio, it was an angel."

"And as we have seen, and heard, and read, that does not preclude mischief or evil or wrong-doing," the Jesuit argued mildly.

The soft flicking of pages ceased as the Irish priest stared down at the book in front of him. "That's him," he breathed, his finger resting lightly beside a reproduction of an oil painting on the page.

Father Emilio walked around the desk, leaning over to look at the painting.

The artist had captured the subject well, on a hilltop with a darkening sky behind him, great rose-tinted grey wings stretched out to either side of the tall form, long, pale, wheaten gold hair streaming out. The angel wore robes of white, belted at the waist with a golden cord and a short, bright blade hanging from the knots. Looking down at the caption, the priest read – _Camael, delivering God's judgement on Gomorrah_.

"That's the messenger you saw?"

"Yes," Father McConnaughey nodded, staring at the picture worriedly. "Why would an archangel come to help an old man and less than a hundred survivors?"

He looked up at Father Emilio. "Why would he tell me about the gates?"

The Jesuit shook his head. "I don't know, Sean."

* * *

_**Strawberry Peak, Utah**_

Mid-May and still the wind that whistled down from the peaks to the north and teased among the valleys, was cold enough to chill lager on an outdoor table, Harrer thought as he walked up the flagged path toward the main building, pulling the collar of his coat higher around his ears.

Alongside the path, yellow and blue, purple, white and pale pink wildflowers were blooming, pushing through the soil and competing with the short grass. The Grigori ignored the shy display, climbing the short, wide flight of steps to the building's deep porch and pushing through the front doors. Shedding his heavy coat in the warmth of the big hall, Harrer quickened his pace as he walked through the wide doorway into what had been a restaurant and bar, before the virus had wiped out clientele and management in a cleansing sweep. Now the room, with its high cathedral ceiling and elegantly long, modern chandeliers, walls panelled in a warm, golden timber and polished parquetry hardwood floor, held several long tables, a half-dozen clusters of plush, comfortable club sofas and armchairs with occasional tables nestling beside them, and the curving polished oak bar, with its Native American artwork of running horses behind it, the only reminder of its past.

"Karl, we've been waiting."

Harrer nodded apologetically to the man standing in front of the huge stone hearth, taking a proffered glass of brandy from a chained woman waiting with the tray and sitting down in an empty chair.

"There was a problem with the secondary set of generators," he said, by way of explanation as he sipped the fragrant liquid, his gaze almost, but not quite, meeting the eerily pale eyes watching him. "Some fool didn't lag the pipes correctly and they froze last night."

The man standing by the fire blinked slowly at him. Tall and wide-shouldered, with long, white-blonde hair that framed a thin, pale face, the contrast with the immaculately-tailored black silk suit he wore was startling, as if he were a ghost or a being that didn't belong in the real world of colour. The thin-lipped mouth drew back in a reptilian smile as he nodded and turned away, and Harrer felt the tension in his neck and chest ease slightly.

In theory, they were all brothers, all equals, deserters from the dream of the Morning Star, valuing their necks above loyalty, above honour and principle, but the reality, of course, was that there was no equality between them, no bond that gave any immunity from any other. And none of them would make an enemy of Zekeial, known for the last eighty years as Julius Lehmann, their de facto leader through wars and prosperity. Not if it could be avoided.

"Eric and Dietrich are gone," Julius said, looking at the five sitting around him. "They underestimated their adversary and overestimated their ally." He turned to the man seated to his right. "Peyotr, could you give us a brief summation?"

The dark-haired Grigori rose awkwardly from the overstuffed chair, holding a clipboard with a thick sheaf of papers fastened to it. He had taken over the body of the Russian Bolshevik in 1915, and he still found the too-wide shoulders and too-broad chest to be a monumental irritation when it came to moving around.

"We also lost Hubertus, Ariana and Joaquin in the attack on the demon's quarters in Massachusetts," he began, deep voice thickly accented, eyes skimming down his notes. "The boy did not know the details of what had happened, unfortunately, he left as soon as he perceived that he could not feel Hubertus in the house or on this plane any longer. He did not feel the half-breed's death, however, and it seems likely that the men have imprisoned him in the mirror, which Eric and Dietrich had in their possession." He flicked a glance around the others. "These losses, combined with the loss of Raphael, means that our plans will be set back by at least two months."

"Why did we not receive –?" Haushofer leaned forward on the long sofa.

"Questions later, Karl," Lehmann said coolly, and Haushofer sat back, dropping his gaze.

"The death of Crowley released the Three," Peyotr continued. "Hell is closed to us as a resource and as a means to begin the Second War. And since the men now have both prophet and Word, we will have to press our brethren on the Divine plane that much harder. There is now only one way we can gain control of sufficient numbers of demons to prevent the closing of the gates and regain the tablet."

Glancing at Julius, Peyotr hesitated. "With the dead, we have vessels for less than six thousand at this time," he said slowly. "We need the boy to find more, at least another four before we will be able ensure a resounding victory over the humans, enough to force Michael into leading the Host down here."

Julius stared at him consideringly. "Send the boy and the next youngest, the girl. How many can they bring back to us?"

"Any number," Peyotr said, relief evident in his face. "The boy has mastered his gifts."

"Before you send him out, I want that mirror."

"We cannot reverse the spell –" Peyotr began, and Lehmann waved his hand impatiently, cutting him off.

"No, not yet," he said sharply. "But we will. And I want it here."

"Of course," Peyotr agreed stiffly, looking down at his notes. "The problem of reacquiring the tablet, and the prophet to translate it, remains. Another siege situation will reduce our numbers much faster than theirs and it is not to our advantage to slaughter the small populations we have left."

"No," Julius agreed readily. "No, we will leave that task to our reluctant guest."

"The binding spell is not complete," Gottfried warned him. "We need to wait for the births –"

"We have enough time for that," Julius said confidently. "We have sufficient women for the ritual?"

"Yes, now we have nine," Gottfried confirmed. "The blood we're drawing will keep him sustained until it's time."

"And the gun, Julius?" Harrer said, glancing at the others. "It killed Eric and Dietrich, killed the king of the accursed plane and the nephilim – it will kill the cambion as easily. What are we doing about that?"

"The demon underestimated the men involved," Julius said, turning to look at Harrer absently "As did our brothers. That was a mistake that we will not make."

"What information do we have on them?" Gottfried asked, leaning back in the corner of the sofa. "The lines of Araquiel and Azazel were not the primaries, at least not for the lines. Only for Michael and Lucifer. And even then, only as their vessels."

"We are waiting for that information," Peyotr told him. "The current Scribe does not have it."

"What makes you think that it even exists? Metatron may not have written it down," Haushofer said, staring at him. "He took the tablets to the Qaddiysh – they will be easier to break!"

"It will be written down and the prophet will be able to read it," Julius said quellingly. "Patience, Karl. We have waited a long time for these times; we are not going to act without due consideration and lose sight of the end now."

* * *

Jesse stood close to the girl who was only three years his senior. Feeling his nervousness, Sabrine slipped her arm around him, ducking her head to whisper a reassurance in his ear as they listened to Felice's instructions. Returning to the house was not something he wanted to do. He was relieved when the older cambion woman told him he would go with the girl beside him.

"You must find every single piece, Jesse," Felice said carefully, leaning over a little to look into his eyes. "We can restore the mirror, but only if every piece is there. Bring it here and then you and Sabrine will have another task."

There was nothing but their own care to prevent either of them from being drawn into the enchanted glass themselves. He swallowed slightly and nodded, feeling the girl's hand curl around his. A faint pop as the air rushed to fill the spaces they'd been, stirring the edges of the curtains of the room, was the only sound to mark their departure.

* * *

The basement was long and narrow and frigidly cold, stone and metal and damp rising from the bedrock beneath the foundations. To one side, iron bars were set into the ceilings and floors, each as thick as a man's wrist, spelled and engraved with sigils of binding, of deflection and death, dividing the length of the room into small, square cells on one side. In the cell at the far end, the creature stood, chained from ankle to neck, the bright metal links wound through with hawthorn and vervain, binding him to the stone pillar that supported the floors above. Behind him, on a high gantry, the body dripped its blood down a plastic tube that terminated in his neck. Dark skin gleaming slightly in the dim light, pale, golden eyes unblinking as he watched the line of women walk past. Their chains clanked on the stone floor as they shuffled along, not quite well fed enough for both mother and the children they carried, bellies distended, growing every day, he thought.

He'd heard of the spell, centuries ago, in what had been a wilderness of ice and wind, a long way to the north and west of this continent. An abomination of black magic, of sacrifice and a perversion of the forces that had created all life. It would bind him, he knew, in invisible chains that he would never escape, tied by a blood bond that even his dark Mother would not be able to sever. For the moment, they were only feeding him the women's blood and he could feel his strength returning, the effects of the herbs and silver and lifeless blood diminishing in power a little more each day. He would not have a particularly wide window to work with. And so far, there had been no opportunity to use the powers that he was not known for.

The unfamiliar face caught his attention and he stared at the woman, her head bowed as she moved with the others. They had made the nine finally, he realised, his face expressionless as he watched her walk down to the table where the blood was drawn for him. No more time now, no more than a month or two at most. Six men had been brought to the cell, barely half-conscious as the sorcerer had cut open the vein in his wrist and held it above their open mouths. He wasn't sure where they'd been taken, but he would have to find them and take them with him when he went.

* * *

_**Litteris Hominae, Kansas**_

_Take a deep breath, Sammy, we're going down to the bottom, find the treasure, Dean said, grinning at him, dark hair seal-slicked with the salt water, nose red and peeling from the endless sunshine that summer in Jersey and then he'd disappeared, under the water's surface, dragging Sam with him, down into the cool jade-green depths. He'd belatedly snatched a mouthful of air before he was pulled under, it's Sam! Sam! _Sam!_ pounding through his head as he felt his lungs begin to ache, his eyes stinging when he opened them, seeing his brother head down and reaching for the smooth, sandy seabed. Dean! It's Sam! Dean, I can't breathe!_

_The hand locked around his wrist changed and he looked down, a bony claw curled around his arm now and a blackened skull twisted back to look at him, exposed jaws in a gruesome grin, a crab swimming out of the empty eye sockets. Got a deep breath, Sammy? We're going down, all the way to the Cage!_

_Sam opened his mouth to scream, and the water rushed in, filling his mouth and throat, filling his lungs, it's Sam_! Sam!_ ricocheting around his mind as darkness wrapped around him and consciousness fled._

"Sam!"

He sat up, arm swinging out at the touch on his skin, eyes wide and staring.

"Sam, it's okay, just a dream," Marla said from beside the bed. "You're awake now."

His heart was jackhammering against his ribs, hands and feet prickling and burning, the skin dry and reddened, the heat reaching up over his wrists and forearms, up his ankles and into his calves.

"Water," he grunted, looking around the shadowy room wildly. Marla picked up the bottle sitting on the nightstand and thrust it into his hand, and he lifted it, tipping his head back and swallowing the cold liquid in great, desperate gulps. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes not. The burning flickered and faded, receding slowly as he finished the bottle, leaving a residue of sweat over his skin where it had been.

"Thanks," he said, handing her the empty bottle and leaning back against the bedhead, both hands sweeping upward over his face and into his hair. The dream had started as a memory, the summer they'd spent on the Jersey shore while their father had been laid up with injuries. Dean teaching him to swim because it'd been so hot there was nothing else they could do. What it'd turned into … he wasn't so sure about that. The voice of the skull had sounded like Lucifer.

Marla handed him a towel, cool and moist and he took it gratefully, wiping his neck and face, eyes closing at the relief of the damp cloth against his skin.

"Are you hungry?" she asked him, and he opened his eyes to look at her, shaking his head.

"No," he said, a little tersely. "Maybe later."

He'd been here for five days, he thought, and rest was doing nothing for him. He hadn't eaten in the last two days, since the last meal had somehow turned to carrion in his mouth while he'd been chewing. He'd slept perhaps five hours over the time, waking from dreams that seemed to follow the consistent pattern, starting out as memories, good memories, and turn into something else.

"How's Chuck doing?" he asked, pushing the covers back and swinging his legs off the bed.

"That's what I came up to tell you, he's found more details about the gates," she said, standing as he did, her eyes dark with worry. "Sam, you should try to rest –"

"I've been resting, Marla," he said, his tone softening as he looked down at her. "It's not doing any good – and I might as well be doing something useful."

She'd been there with him, looking after him, and he couldn't pretend that wasn't a relief, a soothing balm against the pain that wormed through him almost constantly since he'd read the spell. In the stillness of the night, her hands had held his, and her voice, warm and gentle, had kept him tethered to the real world, letting him break free of the visions and nightmares that were haunting him whether he was asleep or awake. It had been a long time – a very long time – since someone had looked at him the way she did, not seeing the vessel of Lucifer, or the man with the demon blood, but just the man. It had been a long time since anyone had offered comfort and peace.

He offered her a rueful, one-sided grin and turned away, reaching for his jeans and pulling them on quickly. He couldn't let the tentative feelings go any further. He'd made a contract with God, and he wouldn't be coming back. There wouldn't be an afterward.

"What in particular about the gates?"

Matching the matter-of-fact shift in his tone, she walked to the door of the room, leaning against the frame as she waited for him. "Jerome says that Chuck has found the locations."

He saw her smile as his head snapped up to look at her. "Seriously?"

She nodded. "There are ten on this continent and another thirty around the world. The locations are specific – apparently nine of them were only able to be used by the Fallen, the others were opened by someone else."

"Opened?"

"The tablet said that on the sites of great atrocities, of massacre and where the blood of many innocents has been spilled, a crack into the lower plane opens in protest."

As remembered and read-about events filled his mind, Sam began to get an inkling of where at least some of the gates were.

"What else?"

* * *

"Spells for controlling the lesser hierarchies, rituals for binding the levels, incantations to open the gates of the nine," Jerome said, looking down at the pile of loosely bound papers in front of him. "Talismans and guards for moving unseen, the laws under which the accursed plane must operate, the histories of the Fallen and of the first human souls that Lucifer was given."

He looked up at Sam with a humourless smile. "Nightmare reading."

Shrugging that off, Sam leaned across the table. "Where's the closest gate we can open?"

"Sioux Falls," Marla told him, spreading out a map that had been marked with the locations of the gates in the United States across the table. "It was Azazel's gate."

Lifting a brow, Sam looked back at Jerome. "He wasn't one of the nine."

"No, but most of the top tier had their own gates," Jerome explained. "They can't enter or leave by any other."

"Anything to stop them from using their mind mojo?" Dean asked from the doorway, limping up the steps and walking to the table. "The telekinesis and mind games?"

"Several spells and two of the talismans are designed to protect against that," Jerome confirmed, his brows drawing together as he looked at the hunter. "Should you be here?"

His arm was still in the sling, and under the fading and yellowing bruises, Dean's face was pale, freckles standing out over nose and cheeks. He looked at the legacy for a moment then turned to Sam without answering.

"You alright?"

"I'll live," Sam said shortly, looking pointedly at his brother's arm. "You look like hell."

"Thanks," Dean said, his crooked smile not reaching his eyes as he eased himself into a chair at the table. "So, full blueprints of how to get in there and nail those fuckers?"

"Pretty much," Sam agreed, looking back at the text in front of him. "Enough to make getting down the cage and back again a possibility."

"When do we go?"

Sam lifted his head and looked at his brother. "As soon as you can use your right hand," he said, the challenge very faint along the edge of his voice.

"A week or two then."

He snorted. "Yeah, right."

Ignoring that, Dean looked at Jerome. "Have we got what we need to open that gate in Sioux Falls?"

"Yes, the store-rooms have every item that's required," the scholar said, pushing his glasses back up his nose as he looked at Dean. "Once the gate is opened, the blood of Cerberus will allow entry through the cliffs."

"How long to make whatever talismans or wards to get through?"

"Franklin took a copy of the instructions last night," Jerome told him. "He thought a week, maybe ten days, to make the moulds and work out the temperatures needed for the alloys."

"This was in yesterday's transcriptions, Sam," Marla said, moving around the table to Sam and holding out a couple of typed pages. "We think it's a new vision, fragments only, that came through while Chuck was transcribing."

Sam took them and started reading and Dean looked at her curiously. "Where is Chuck?"

"He's in his office with Mitch and Deirdre," Marla said, gesturing to the hallway. "He hasn't been constantly plugged in, the way he was before, and whenever he comes out of it, he can sleep on the couch with someone around to look after him all the time."

"He handling it okay?"

She gave him a dry look. "Not really."

"Dean."

They both turned to see Peter walk into the room, followed by Elena and Penemue.

"You missed her?"

"And the vampire," Peter said, dropping into the chair beside him. "But we found something else."

Marla watched the brothers as Peter told Dean about the Grigori base, and Sam focussed on the fragments of Chuck's latest vision, interleaved with a very vague account of sealing every gate without shutting the plane's entries. Of all three Winchester men, she found the oldest to be the most difficult to understand, or even come to the beginnings of understanding. Adam was simple, he was young and still labouring under his self-made burden of growing up without a father, the resentments still those of a child, denied something he wanted. Much of that immaturity had been purged from him over the last six months,, she knew, and when she'd seen him at the keep last week, he'd seemed older, more aware of others. She thought that Jerome was hoping Adam would return to the order, perhaps show an interest in becoming a legacy, since it seemed more and more likely that Sam would not be able to continue his work there and Dean showed little interest in either his history with them or in settling to a scholar's life.

Sam, she thought, was not simple, but he was not as deliberately evasive as his older brother. He'd told her a little of his past, and she knew the choices he'd made, the decisions he regretted with all his heart. She also saw the deeply hidden streak of fatalism that all three brothers seemed to share, unknowingly on Adam's part, and she thought, Sam's, but Dean obviously aware of it. She'd wondered if that was why the leader accepted every load laid on him, almost without noticing.

Watching Sam from under her eyelashes, she thought that Sam was also coming to accept that the load he had to carry was inescapable. He was, in some ways, looking forward to the trials, and in some ways, glad for the pain of the process he believed was a purification of the demonic blood from his veins. She wasn't sure if he'd accepted and understood what had driven him along the path he'd taken yet, or if he was using what was happening to him now as a substitute for searching for that understanding, but she could see that no matter how agonising his torment became, there was still something inside of him that relished the pain, as some monks in the past had relished their self-inflicted agonies to prove to themselves that they were worthy of God's love. It was something she couldn't say to him, not now, not yet. Some time he would be ready to hear it, and then, she felt sure, he would understand what she meant.

Dean Winchester was different. He'd accepted his load, his pain and his mistakes and did nothing to mitigate them. A fighter, she thought, listening to him argue with Peter and the Qaddiysh, his deep voice raised a little. She had watched him with Alex, when they'd been here before the attack, and she'd thought then, especially in the last few days, that he had trusted no one else in the same way. Even with his brother, she sensed that the leader held a lot back, kept himself apart. And also with Rufus and Bobby and Ellen, there was always a sense that they knew a part of him, but not all, that he would never allow anyone to know all of him. Except that it had seemed, to her, that he had with the woman who had been carrying his children. She closed her eyes briefly, recalling the last evening she'd seen them together as they'd left the order, the way he'd looked at her, the protectiveness that had flowed naturally from him, surrounding her, but hesitantly, as if he'd never looked after someone quite like that before, hadn't felt quite that way with anyone before.

Opening her eyes, she looked at his profile, and realised that the shell she'd seen when she'd first met him, before the battle in Atlanta and the destruction of Chitaqua, had returned to shield him. And it was harder. Thicker. Stronger. She realised she hadn't seen a single expression reach to his eyes in the last few weeks. They remained cold and calculating no matter who he was talking to – or what he was talking about.

"Anything on the cambion come out of that tablet yet?"

"Just what we already knew," Jerome said, watching Dean's expression as the younger man looked away, jaw tightening. "The stones and the mirror."

"We can't attack them front on," Peter said worriedly, watching the hunter as well. "There are five of them there, and their offspring, and at least six cambion, possibly more. We wouldn't be able to get the slaves clear without risking them and us in the attempt."

For a long moment, Dean stared across the table, eyes hooded and thoughtful, then he nodded slowly. "Can Michel keep an eye on them? Now he's got a location?"

"Yes," Jerome said, feeling a thread of relief as he saw Dean relinquish the idea of killing everyone in the camp to get the fallen angels. It was a strategic decision but the wrong one, he thought. And he hadn't yet seen the hunter make a wrong choice. Except the one to trust the angel. "I sent him the location and he's modified the signature files to correlate with the three distinct energy frequencies they picked up via the defence satellite."

"What about Michigan?" Dean asked, rubbing a hand over his face. "Any word?"

"Not so far," Peter said. "Bobby and Rufus have been waiting."

* * *

_**May 30, 2013. West Keep, Kansas**_

He couldn't drive. The inability to do what came most naturally to him was unbelievably aggravating. Dean sat in the passenger seat of the Impala, his eyes fixed to the road ahead, the steady action of the wipers clearing the sheeting rain from the glass and bisecting his view, his face hard.

Beside him, hands curled lightly around the leather-covered wheel, Rufus slid a sideways glance at him.

"You alright?"

"Fine," Dean snapped automatically, then dragged in a breath and turned to look at him. Nothing that gone on in the last couple of weeks had anything to do with the man sitting beside him, and he trusted Rufus with the car, at least. "What'd Liev say, about the new design for the walls?"

"He was happy," Rufus told him. "Should be able to get them incorporated as soon as the outer wall is finished."

"Did he need help?"

"No, said he could manage."

"What's going on?" Dean asked reluctantly. He'd gone down to see the builder, and Liev had hustled him out of the construction zone as if he'd had a particularly contagious dose of the clap. Franklin's apprentice, Tony, had been the same way, and he'd seen the expressions on the faces of Franklin's new recruits, watching him doubtfully as he'd left.

"Seems like your temporary nurse was feeling a bit scorned," Rufus said uncomfortably. Dean looked at him, one brow lifted.

"Like which fury Hell hath no?"

The older hunter snorted. "Yeah, like that."

"She go to Tawas?"

"Yeah, she's gone," Rufus said, dragging in a deep breath. "Gave everyone she ran into a detailed account of her opinion of you before she went."

Dean rolled his eyes. "So?"

"You want this straight or am I get gonna get an eyeful of your fist if I don't sugar-coat it?"

"Come on."

"Between how you were before you left, and the detailed descriptions she passed around about what'd been done– what happened in Mass," he checked himself with an inward grimace. "There're a lot of people who aren't sure they're so willing to follow you," Rufus finished heavily. "Merrin told me that some assholes are talking about elections."

Dean's mouth lifted at one side. "To run interference on the Grigori and help Sam close the gates of Hell? Bring 'em on, I'll vote for whatever sap puts his hand up for that!"

"This isn't funny, Dean."

"Sure it is! This is fucking hilarious, man," Dean said, closing his eyes and leaning back in the seat. "Vote for someone else to take this load – fuck! Why the hell didn't I think of that? Months ago?"

"Like it or not, we need these people," Rufus insisted, flicking a glance at him. "And they need us –"

"No," Dean said abruptly, his amusement vanishing as he turned his head to look out through the window. "They don't need us. They don't need me."

* * *

_**Lightning Oak Keep, Kansas**_

Dean sat hunched in the armchair in front of the fire, vaguely aware of the rain still streaming down the glass of the narrow windows in the south wall, of Rufus and Bobby and Ellen's low conversation on the other side of the room, of the insistent throb in his shoulder with the tension that filled him.

"What the hell are they thinking?!" Ellen exclaimed, her voice rising in indignation.

"They're not thinking, really," Bobby said, glancing at the still figure near the hearth. "Just reacting, like always."

"We can't let this happen, Rufus," she said, dropping her voice as she took in Bobby's look. "This is insane."

The flames danced over the logs, twisting and bowing and flaring out hypnotically, and Dean tuned out their voices. It would be a good thing, if the keeps took over their own management, he thought remotely. It would let him do his job without having to think about everyone's welfare, without the load of their safety resting solely on him. That would be a good thing.

He'd never been fired from a job in his life – had left dozens, of his accord – but had never been told he wasn't fit for whatever he'd shown up to do. The thought kept circling in his mind. He knew he wasn't fit for it, not any more. He couldn't get on top of the rage that seeped out continuously, in his sleep, in his waking hours; couldn't direct it away from the people around him, couldn't be bothered with the effort of doing that. The confrontation with Zoe, after the priest had left, could've been handled better but he hadn't thought of that at the time, and that elusive memory had returned and the combination of grief and the betrayal of his own vulnerability and the rage had blown it all up.

Rufus and Bobby thought it'd been an overreaction, he knew. The rest of the keep as well, most likely. Another overreaction in the man who'd been pushed too far. His mouth twitched humourlessly. That was the truth, at least. He'd been pushed way too far. An involuntary shiver raced up his spine. Way too far.

Ellen walked over to the fire, sitting down in the chair opposite him, Rufus and Bobby trailing along behind her.

"We're not going to let this happen, Dean," she said, arranging herself awkwardly as she stared at him.

"Who're they looking at?" he asked Rufus.

"Uh, I think Russell is looking likely," Rufus said, scratching at his jaw and lifting a brow at Bobby.

"The teacher?" Dean frowned, trying to remember the tall, mild man. He'd helped save the kids in Chitaqua when the planes had come. That was the only solid memory he had of the guy.

Bobby nodded. "He's … uh, been doing some lobbying."

That image brought a scowl to Dean's face. "Nuh-uh, Liev or Jackson," he said sharply. "Happy to leave it to either one of them, but no one who wants the job gets it. We're not heading down that road again."

Ellen glanced up at Bobby. "Merrin would probably be able to help us swing that," she said slowly. "But, Dean, this is – with everything that's going on –"

Dean looked at her. "Ellen, that's exactly why this isn't a bad thing. We're up to our necks in problems – hunter problems – and looking after the population as well – it's a distraction we can do without. I'm okay – I'm happy – to leave that to someone else, provided that they've got the sense to do the job right."

Rufus blinked. It was all true. He hadn't thought that Dean would ever feel that way, though. Be able to step back and hand over to anyone else. His brows drew together slightly as he opened his mouth.

"Why?"

The question brought a grin, one that didn't reach the younger man's eyes. As usual. "Hell, Rufus, we've got the end of the world sitting on our doorstep again. You think it's not a relief to leave the paperwork to someone else?"

He leaned forward in the chair. "All that crap Chuck's been spouting from the tablet, that'll protect the keeps and the farms," he said, looking from Rufus to Bobby to Ellen. "It'll give us the weapons we need to go after the source. Sam's going to do the second trial the second we've got those talismans from Frank, and I've got to go with him."

He gave them a moment to absorb that, glancing back at the fire. "It means that someone else has to go hunting for Nintu, and it looks like we've got at least two, but probably more, of the alpha monsters loose and shaking things up. Crowley might be dead, but there're three archdemons down in Hell, and who-the-fucks-knows-what going on in Heaven." He shrugged carefully, using his left shoulder only. "That's enough for us, don't you think?"

"Sure, but –" Bobby started to say, and Dean shook his head.

"No," he said, cutting him off. "What's the story in Michigan?"

* * *

_**Lago d'Orta, Italy**_

Luc shifted minutely again, feeling the water streaming over the rock he was lying on soaking into him steadily. "What are we doing here again?" he murmured to the man prone beside him.

"Watching the lake," Marc said softly, his hand shielding the binoculars he stared through from the steady drizzle. "Michel got new signature keys from the Utah location. The Grigori moved to Switzerland four days ago." He glanced around at the dark-haired hunter. "And we're keeping you of Antoinette's way so that she doesn't kill you before your children are born," he added with a grin.

Luc ignored that. He couldn't help himself, he thought defensively. Having successfully avoided any emotional entanglements for the last twenty-four years, he'd been astonished at the change in his emotions the minute the redhead had told him. Suddenly he was worried about her, about the pregnancy, about everything. Her irritation with him had grown proportionately.

"Did we find anything on them in the files?"

"Didn't you read the damned files when Francesca gave them to you?" Marc asked, his voice sharpening in exasperation. "Antoinette is supposed to the one forgetting things, not you."

"_Merde_," Luc said, his voice low and harsh as his hands tightened their grip on the glasses he held. "What the fuck is that?"

Looking back down to the narrow strip of road on the other side of the wide body of water, Marc refocussed the glasses on the movement the other hunter had seen emerge from the forest.

They leapt out at him, in far too much detail through the lenses of the glasses and he swallowed as he scanned the road, the estimate ticking upwards in his head. More than a hundred, more than a thousand, he realised as they kept walking out of the forest that covered the slopes of the mountains, their gait more of a shambling than a march but their purpose unmistakable even so.

_People_, he supposed. But not living. The skin slipped from them, sagging in folds of shiny grey meat, hair straggling in clumps that barely adhered to the scalps and here and there he saw the white gleam of bone through the rotting flesh. Their eyes were sunken deep within the sockets, their clothes fluttering and dragging in shreds around the pouchy and malformed bodies.

"Are they dead?" Luc asked, the binoculars pressed hard against his face.

"I think so," Marc answered him distractedly. "Zombies, perhaps."

"Marc, there're over a thousand, no one can raise zombies like that –"

"But someone has," Marc cut him off, lowering his glasses and rolling onto his side. "Pack up, we've got to get back."


End file.
